


Super Incident

by pastann



Category: Scott Pilgrim - All Media Types, Supernatural, Supernatural RPF
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Character Death, Crack Treated Seriously, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Freeform, Gen, Gore, Horror, Intrigue, Magical Realism, Mistaken Identity, Parallel Universes, Unreliable Narrator, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-24
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-04-23 03:07:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 19,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4860713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pastann/pseuds/pastann
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jared followed the top of Coordinator Tara Larsen’s strawberry blonde head down the monotonous central corridor in Atlantic’s south headquarters. It was surreal; he didn’t know what he was doing here.</p><p>The soles of his scruffy Keds pressed onto the linoleum floor and pulled off the uncompromising surface beneath his feet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Jared

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the awesome superhero fan fictions by truly_esoteric and cleflink. Also inspired by n_nami's fic, kototyph's house and aisalynn's disaster.
> 
> Thanks to the reviewers and betas who gave crits.
> 
> I've been told I need a cast of characters. It's at the end, has spoilers.

###  **Jared:**

####  **Atlantic’s South Headquarters**

Jared followed the top of Coordinator Tara Larsen’s strawberry blonde head down the monotonous central corridor in Atlantic’s south headquarters. It was surreal; he didn’t know what he was doing here.

The soles of his scruffy Keds pressed onto the linoleum floor and pulled off the uncompromising surface beneath his feet.

Who was he kidding? This mission was a trip into insanity: a death sentence that his big mouth had gotten him into and his pride wouldn’t let him back down from.

Jared followed her into a large room filled with slanted schoolroom computer stations and lined with ceiling-to-floor monitors. Tara stopped and faced a cell paneled with one-way glass. The clatter of support personnel bustling around the operations room faded. A hot babe was completely naked inside the cell, toweling herself off with her back partly turned the door. Her lustrous, dark hair brushed the skin of her back as she reached for her clothes. Tiny black panties raced up her long, slender legs and—

He tore his eyes from the woman’s panties. Coordinator Larsen’s innocent, intense face was turned to look up at him.

“Your cover identity is good?” Tara asked intently.

_ Pull it together. Not a teenager. _

“Yeah, we’ve kept it up-to-date. Outside of Atlantic, Samantha is in medical device sales for AlmetBio. And I haven’t dropped my identity cloak for years. It’ll be difficult to break my cover even if Dr Badass is compromised.” His identity and the company they’d painstakingly built into a genuine, slightly profitable distribution network was their fall-back if Atlantic abandoned them out there. He, Jeannie, and Gabe had put enough work into that thing.

“I’m so glad to hear that. As Rapunzel, you may be interviewing for a sidekick position for Containment or Dr. Badass. It is critical that you can’t be traced back to Atlantic.”

_ Yeah. Great. A job interview with superpowerful crazy supers who might be minionized or under mind control. _

“Right, got it,” Jared said firmly, suppressing the nervousness racing in his bloodstream.

Silence.

Tara looked at the monitors on the walls.

Jared wanted to ask about the upcoming mission, but he’d pushed his luck what with that ass Mercury’s Quick pulling out. No reason to bring up any doubts Tara had regarding his lack of qualifications for the mission.

Come to think of it, if he made it back, his appointment schedule was going to be a mess for weeks if not months and Coordinator Larsen had told them not to inform patients of canceled appointments until tomorrow morning.

_ Maybe dying wouldn’t be all bad. _

The glass door swung open and the woman stepped out. The straight, masculine lines of her heavy brown jacket and dark pants with bulging pockets looked good on her body; the contrast of her SWAT-team clothing made her even more girlishly seductive and beautiful. Jared lowered his eyes. Her thick, metal toolbelt hung low on her wide, curvy hips and dipped below her belly button. The soft fuzz on her belly rippled and sent heat--

Jared stared at the black flecks on the linoleum floor while he stepped past her into the cell. The glass door shut. At the far end, a small bench was bolted to the floor, a hamper for dirty towels by the right side. In the far left corner, a tall wood cabinet was stacked with fluffy beige and white towels. He snagged a towel and mopped the sweat off his neck and chest.

He took off the wig first. The boost to his hair powers must be messing with his head … or the device was malfunctioning. Jeannie’d picked the worst or best place and time for a vacation, visiting her family in Vancouver. At least she’d be on the ground when he got there. He’d facetimed her and she walked him through restoring the hair cells in the wig, but the majority of the cell lines were damaged.

The metal clips on the plastic pouches of hair samples clattered loudly as he set his costume on the bench.

A quietly bland, electronic voice spoke over the intercom, “Please take a seat.”

Jared sat on the bench, facing the black, glass wall. On the other side of one of the dark panels, a mind-controller was going to read his mind and strip away the protection that kept him and his family off Atlantic’s high-risk watch list.

Nothing happened. Jared looked around for the intercom’s speaker; he didn’t see anything resembling an intercom.

“Re--

Jared flinched.

“...moval complete,” the voice blared. “Take time to become accustomed to your powers, Jared.”

He hadn’t heard his true name in a long time.

“Thanks,” Jared said to the air.

The mind-controller had his file and the notes on the mind-control programs installed inside of him eight years ago. It made sense. It was just ... unsettling.

Jared got dressed, picked up the wig and pushed the glass door open.

The dark-haired woman calmly slipped a roll of paper into a plastic sleeve on her belt, probably some top secret Support Network agent thing that he didn’t know about.

She was incredibly hot.

She looked up at him intently, as if she saw him for who he was. For a moment, Jared felt his stupid, dysfunctional identity cloak waver, as if it and his female identity was an illusion, a lie he fooled himself into believing at the same time that he believed in it, needed it for identity protection. He wondered what she saw. She looked tense - coiled and ready to spring into action.

The room behind her bustled quietly with activity. A slob of a man shambled up from the desk he was sitting at, a fistful of papers clutched in one meaty hand. The monitors showed satellite images of a typhoon and the insides of boring office buildings. From this angle, he saw a large moveable whiteboard in the far corner of the room. Someone had written ~6340 in large letters on the upper left in red and drew a box around it -- probably an estimate of the number of deaths without superhero intervention. The team in this center must be prepping for disaster relief for Typhoon Haiyan.

The moment stretched uncomfortably long. “It’s removed,” he said, trying to sound calm, like he took off mind control programs and went on stupidly dangerous missions all the time. Although he didn’t know how often three backup teams got called up as support for one mission, it sounded bad and he wasn’t ready for what he was walking into.

“Rapunzel, this is Ruby, the lead for Team B,” Tara introduced them.

_ Oh. _ Now he felt worse for staring at her.

Ruby gave him a wide, deep smile. “Glad to work with you on this case.”

The warm, mellow timbre of her voice ran into his body like the bubbles from a sip of soda, buzzing inside his throat and settling low in his belly.

“Oh yeah, me too.” Jared forced his face to smile and tried to sound calm and confident. “I’m looking forward to defending Super interests and protecting civilians inter-regionally.”

“Right,” Ruby glanced at Tara Larsen, then started to walk down to the corridor.

Jared trailed after Ruby’s tiny, briskly-moving body. The top of her head would come up to the middle of his chest.

“How much of the mission information have you reviewed?” Ruby asked.

“I glanced over it,” Jared said. “Madison showed me her files.” He blanked for a moment before he remembered. He’d review the files more thoroughly on the flight to Vancouver. It had been a long day. He’d spent most of the hour-or-so between finding out about the mission and Vortex teleporting them to south Atlantic headquarters arguing with Madison and then with Gabe, and then getting his registered combat costume together while Gabe fast-talked Tara into the assignment. He regretted the lack of thought he’d put into the design.

“I understand it was a last minute decision,” Ruby said.

“Absolutely, I can’t let her go alone. She’s not ready for a combat mission,” Jared said urgently. “I realize the backup teams need a rapid teleporter to pull people out in case the shit hits the fan, but I don’t understand why a more experienced combat super couldn’t be assigned—

They started down a narrow, spiral flight of stone stairs leading to the shielded chambers below. Jared stopped talking to balance on the unevenly cut and hand-smoothed stone. The humming roar of bees grew loud enough to drown out human speech. An arched, stone doorway inlaid with fiery opals the size of his fist loomed abruptly in front of them. The opals flared as they crossed, and Jared blinked his eyes closed. The sound of bees cut out on the other side.

Without pausing, Ruby strode into the chill of the narrow, irregular labyrinth guarding the earth chambers.

“…to this mission. She’s eighteen!”

Madison had turned eighteen this week and they’d celebrated her birthday at Super School. Most of the kids didn’t have their families and that’d started the tradition of celebrating birthdays at school. Madison’s family was fine. They lived in L.A. under Gabriel in Cali-South Super Region. In a way, he was surprised that she’d left, but Gabriel was incredibly powerful and ... and that much power in the hands of a man who wasn’t particularly considerate or kind … it made people nervous.

He’d mentored her since partway through sixth grade, when she’d awakened, and only a year or so after he’d awakened. She was average and he was late. He’d been at Super U doing the Master’s in Compassion that Coordinator Manners had pressured him into, and she’d come to the East Coast, a high-strung, nervous teen struggling to find her way in the world. She was as close to his child as he could have as long as he maintained his dysfunctional identity cloak.

Ruby glanced back and gave him a sympathetic look. “I understand the concern and your frustration. The psychics detected the incident at short notice and the other ARTs are unavailable. I’m sure she’ll be safer with a minion master to counter--

Minion master. Jared hated the label.

“...ial power abuse,” Ruby said. “I'll give you a rundown of the mission analysis.”

She was good for her word.

It was reassuring to hear her lay out the mission as Jared trailed after her, walking the stone maze. Straightforward interception of a super awakening with powers in the minion master-mind controller spectrum that psychics had predicted would go rogue and try to carve out a chunk of the world to rule. Puberty, a drive for dominance, and superpowers didn’t mix well in some kids. Team B was running short to mid-term backup to extract or neutralize potential targets who might suffer from aftereffects of mind control or minionization. Maximum mission time of two years before recall. It sounded … relatively safe … as long as the primary team did their jobs perfectly and everything went as predicted by the psychic supers and astral sorcerers.

“How often does it come out like planned?” Jared asked.

Ruby gave him a look and hesitated a split-second before she answered. “About a third of the time. But adherence to the mission guidelines is critical for astral force mitigation and avoiding negative scenarios.”

_ Right. Wouldn’t want everyone to die like in those other universes. Whoever had the idea to scry similar universes to avoid disaster, was genius. _

The nerve in the side of his forearm jangled like his thoughts. He’d hit the edge of his elbow hard before seeing the last patient of the day … another episode of vertigo and it hadn’t felt like he’d drawn too much energy. The astral lighting, widely spaced crystals embedded on either side of the corridor, glowed dimly as he approached. He needed a checkup with an astral sorcerer when he got back.

Thinking about disasters, the ruling supers of B.C. who’d tried to kill him when he’d awakened to his powers had died shortly after his extraction, fighting the supervillain Dr. Teddy Bear. Now he was heading back there with Dr. Teddy Bear as a potential target to protect. The whole situation in B.C. Super Region was … odd.

The dossiers on the five major supers in the area were obviously tampered with … who knows why, and more than one person was in on it. Grace of God’s major superpower was healing; she didn’t just emanate an unreal light and fly. CBC gave a daily news report on people she healed. With his own eyes, Jared’d seen her float around St. Paul’s Hospital, healing the line of petitioners. He had his old co-star Russ, the super-fan stalker, to thank for that. The day he got into Vancouver, they’d gone to leave a gift on the sidewalk leading to the petitioners entrance to the hospital. Most people left cash and a letter or card, and prayed to her for protection and healing. More than one volunteer or intern in the Super Network or at St. Paul’s had full-time work sorting through the junk. It would be easier if Grace of God accepted credit and debit cards and emails from her grateful fans and worshippers.

And then Containment’s dossier listing his only superpower as a Class I complete combat superset. The feel of it reminded him of Jeannie’s file, the way her immunity to minionization was covered up against the day she agreed to do the dull, thankless, and dangerous work of investigating minion masters suspected of power abuse. She stuck by him, kind of a retirement before she got started, but they had a good life and did compassionate work with their hair powers … but she always kept a certain distance, a restrained, watchful, evaluating attitude. It was too bad for him, because she was beautiful and supportive, and knew his real identity under the cloak.

The maudlin thoughts weren’t doing anything to prepare for the insanely dangerous mission.

Jared wondered if Ruby knew what was missing from Containment’s file. People didn’t talk about it, but mass memory modification by minion masters working with astral sorcerers and mind controllers had been common in the ‘80s, before Atlantic stopped most types of superpower abuse. Jared remembered the explosion of South Texas Nuclear Generating Station very clearly because he’d been there, sort of, or at least in San Antonio at the end of first grade when it happened. He remembered his parents’ helpless fear and rage, his whole family sitting in front of the T.V. and watching the news coverage of Torment taking over the power plant, threatening to blow it up and kill the plant workers and the Channel 13 news crew he’d taken hostage over a petty grudge against some local Texas superhero Jared couldn’t remember the name of. Containment went in and blew up the plant, killing Torment and the hostages and then contained the explosion and resulting fallout. It had taken months to move the radioactive soil and water to the moon. Madison had talked about this; Texarkana unified and joined the Super Network because of the incident. In the end, they’d forced a no entry Agreement on Containment and under pressure from Atlantic, the CIA retired him. Another good reason to keep his cover identity tight and his affiliation with Atlantic a secret.

And of course, Vancouver had a sleeper agent so secret, the only thing in the file was the codename: Psy B and two contact portals they weren’t authorized to use. Team A had better handle the situation.

Ruby had stopped in an alcove in the labyrinth, in front of extra-wide, golden double doors. She waited patiently for him to gather his thoughts.

Jared smiled helplessly down at her.

The doors to the earth chamber slid open. An eerie, shimmering light spilled into the corridor and made Jared blink. A few tears trickled out of his eyes. The hexagonal chamber was enclosed in a steel cage with unnaturally shiny bars sunk into the soft, powdery dirt of the floor. A constellation of dimly lit crystals hung overhead and the smoothed rock walls were lined with blurry drawings that Jared’s eyes couldn’t focus on.

The alien wrongness swallowed him as he stepped over the threshold. He stumbled on a hard lump of earth under a thick layer of the fine, powdery dirt.

_ Hope I don’t have to lie down on this, it would be in this dirt. _

Ruby’s firm, strong hands caught him around his hips, her solid body pressed against his back, the side of her cheek and forehead a steady rock, grounding him. Jared shivered. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and--

“Thanks,” Jared blurted out.  _ What was it about her? _

Ruby released him carefully. She peeked out from behind his body like some adorable animal, hiding behind him while she looked up at him.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Good, a little low, nothing I can’t handle,” Jared said.

“Alright. I can do a quick energy draw before we start. I’ll enter synchronization on sphere three?” Ruby spoke tentatively, as if asking for his approval.

“Right,” Jared took a deep breath. He only needed to follow and be receptive to her lead. She must have done this before, especially as far out as sphere three. He wondered how many other agents she was synchronized with.

“We can do this standing,” she said, as if she’d read his mind.

The doubts he had about the mission, about Atlantic, the dissatisfaction with his life, he imagined a box next to him, and put those thoughts inside. Ruby stepped on the powdery earth, lighting small tea candles … made of cocoa butter … a rich smell of chocolate filled his nose and stomach and permeated his body.

_ Almost as good as eating it. _

“I invite you to close your eyes on your exhale breath…,” Ruby chanted.

Closing his eyes as he exhaled and following Ruby’s voice, Jared moved his gaze from the crown of his head on the right side of his body to the earth below his feet, on his inhale breath, his gaze closed the circle from his feet to the crown of his head.

He sensed Ruby moving inside the cage. The heat of the candles intensified and moved high, surrounding his body.

“Synchronizing our breaths … inhale together….”

His eyes relaxed. Her chanting was steadily and plainly narrated. He imagined what she was doing by the movement of her voice, her footsteps in the room, the shifting air, her words.

“...into your awareness. As we open the door to the astral sphere, entering it to....”

Ruby drew the linkage on the touchscreen monitor set on the ledge next to the doorway. From this side, the golden double doors were gray, rough rock slabs gouged out by inhumanly strong hands. The walls began to sweat. He felt hot. Sweat beaded on his forehead and trickled down his face. The taste of dirt in the back of his throat grew heavy.

“...at the edge of the earth that holds us in space, grounded to a massive body. Think about why we’re here. The...”

The space between his eyebrows tingled.

The touchscreen blurred with black and white words and numbers, calculations run in ASTRAL to find the synchronization parameters as Ruby continued to chant. Jared let himself surrender and accept her words as faith. The steady voice, her words guiding and grounding him. He opened his eyes.

A stubby, milky blue channeling crystal appeared in Ruby’s slim fingers and slotted into the socket above the monitor.

No sound or movement. Jared blinked. The crystal rod looked like glass now, translucent. It began to shine with a steady, white light.

_ Smooth. _ The synchronization felt like it had taken ten, maybe fifteen minutes.

He looked down at the top of Ruby’s dark-brown hair. She was holding his hand.

_ When did that happen? _ Jared thought idly. A sense of calm pervaded him.

The doors opened and Ruby’s small, firm hand led him outside. She stopped and looked up at him, gave him a smile, pleased with him … with the successful synchronization. Jared tried to smother a grin of delight.

He didn’t need to look or act goofier than his regular self. Of course, she wouldn’t perceive him as male with his dysfunctional identity cloak active…she was ... single and available. Definitely not seeing anyone. A vibe of restrained urgency came off her. She was worried about the timetable of events.

Ruby started down the irregular, narrow corridor. “Have you flown with Angel before?” she asked quickly.

“No,” Jared said huskily and cleared his throat.

“I’ll describe the procedure. It’s important—

Jared let her words tumble into his ears and sink into his mind without conscious thought. He stared at her glossy black hair. He wanted to run his fingers through it, feel the silk on his body. The strands of her hair swayed and flicked across her jacket, swaying and curling upwards, against gravity, reaching for his body.

_ Stop it. _

“...at the border of Atlantic, I’ll check in with you before—

He was punchy … maybe it was power overuse. His superpowers never worked like everyone else’s. He hated it, hated being a super.

They rode a noisy cage elevator up to the roof. The starkly functional industrial metal looked simultaneously out of place and fitting against the irregular, hand-laid stone slabs of the underground labyrinth and the equally functional, unattractively drab industrial hallway. They walked into a locker room, the antechamber to the airlock-style exit. The walls were straight and it was clean.

He should have registered a winter-ready costume.

Ruby popped open a locker bulging with clothing and rummaged through it. She took out a thick, puffy vest.

“I love your sweater,” Ruby said with genuine appreciation.

It was a nice sweater. It looked like the thin, blue sweaters that Mr. Rogers wore. One more image connotating kindness and compassion and working against the malevolent reputation of minion masters.

“Thanks,” Jared said. He lifted his clear plastic poncho, with dangling bags of hair samples and shrugged on the vest. The poncho that he used as his costume top made him look derpy.

Ruby held out a glass water bottle in a rubbery sleeve. The plain water on his tongue tasted sweet. He must be dehydrated. Jared gulped it down. A trickle of water dribbled out of the side of his mouth and he wiped at it hastily with the hand holding the wig. Drops of water spattered the front of his sweater, but Ruby had her back to him, entering a code into the keypad.

The lock clicked with an audible thunk. Ruby pushed. The door looked heavy from the slow way it opened.... Jared reached over her head and leaned on the door a little. Ruby glanced up at him, giving him a grateful look. Warmth buzzed in him.

A blast of cold air rushed in with the second door, and they stepped onto the sloped concrete roof. A small delta-wing aircraft without visible engines perched on a two-story girder platform that blended into the dim light of dusk. Massive, incorporeal white wings flowed like liquid smoke around the body of the aircraft and the platform.

Jared followed Ruby up the steep, narrow, metal grid stairs to the platform. With each step, the fabric of her pants pulled tight against the rounded curve of--

Jared stared down at his feet. The dirt from the earth chamber had sunk into the cloth of his shoes and turned the white stripes into a dull, light brown barely distinguishable from the dyed brown canvas. The thick coat of greenish-grey nonslip marine paint on the stairway was starting to wear away. He wondered what the maintenance schedule was like... nonexistent, if the condition of the rest of the building was anything to go by.

On the deck, Madison crouched underneath the left wing of the aircraft, next to rectangular pods that looked a lot like the sinister, out-sized coffins used to contain and transport supervillain criminals. Jared hoped they didn’t have to get into those things and he suspected that was exactly what was going to happen.

“Gen,” Madison scrambled up stiffly and stuck out her hand. Her chubby cheeks were red with cold and she was swallowed up by her ridiculously over-sized purple jacket. She looked even younger than she had at dinner, when she’d told him about the mission.

Jared watched as the two women shook hands. They were both brunettes and about the same height. Ruby’s hair was dark, glossy, and straight and Madison’s was curly and a little wild. Seeing them together ... Madison moved with a gawky, self-aware alertness, her superset tightly under control, no hint of speed. She looked young and soft and a little tense, natural for her first mission. Madison looked Ruby in the eyes and glanced over at Jared, sizing them up with a cool, calm awareness.

It was freezing and the wind cut through the sleeves of Jared’s sweater and undershirt.

“Please, call me Ruby for the mission,” Ruby gave the young superhero a wide, brilliant smile.

“Sure,” Madison answered chirpily, meeting Ruby’s eyes.

Ruby’s hand brushed against her toolbelt. In her slim, strong fingers, a flimsy piece of plastic unrolled into a blocky printed circuit. “Let’s exchange identifiers and synchronize.”

_ Mobile synchronization, never seen this before. _

Madison’s plastic microchip went inside Ruby’s toolbelt.

The gold tattoo on the inside of Madison’s wrist glowed as she drew the sleeve of her ridiculous jacket back. A silver razor blade appeared in her fingertips and cut a square socket in her forearm as she pressed Ruby’s plastic circuit in place. Madison’s flesh knitted together and the plastic film slotted in place.

As easy as that, Jared felt Madison’s presence on the outer edge of his synchronized awareness. Her hand dipped into a pocket and came out with a tissue. She dabbed a few drops of blood on her inner wrist, then tucked the tissue back in her pocket. 

In ten years, he could imagine her leading a mission like Ruby.

He just … he wasn’t ready for her to be ready.

Out of the aircraft’s open bay: a big, broad, bald guy who looked like the stereotype of a prison inmate. His wide face had a neatly trimmed salt and pepper beard, Zappa-style, and large cross tattoos stood out on both arms. The notion of looking at the blurry wings sprouting from the guy’s back made Jared’s thoughts drift away … different variation of identity cloak there.

The man looked nothing like an angel.

Jared let his eyes defocus and wander over the aircraft. In his peripheral vision, Angel’s incorporeal astral wings were white-grey feathers ... a stable corporeal form … good for long distance, more vulnerable to attack by other supers.

“You ready to go?” Angel asked in a light, pleasant voice.

Ruby gave Angel a look and he nodded back at her. Jared couldn’t read Ruby’s reaction.

_ Wonder what that means? _

“Any last requests?” Ruby asked and paused.

“Where’s Gabe?” Jared asked. And SSS? Not that he wanted to meet the guy.

Madison looked at Angel, as if she expected him to jump in, then said, “Oh, they got called into a meeting, last minute.”

_ Huh. _

“Superscreensaver transferred,” Ruby cut in quickly. “He mentioned a past personal conflict and requested a reassignment.”

_Oh. Leaves us short-handed._ Ruby didn’t look or feel concerned about that, more that she didn’t want to talk about it.

“Gabe have our luggage and supplies,” Jared said. The defective wig dangled from his fingertips and tendrils of the variegated hair brushed the metal deck.

“They’ll catch up with us later,” Ruby said. “If Gabe gives us ground support, Team C will bring your personal items.” Ruby paused. “This is an active incident and may potentially be active when we arrive. I have orders to abort without confirmation from Coordinators Larsen and Royce every hour.”

Madison looked nervously at Ruby.

_ That’s what makes you realize how dangerous this is? _

“If we’re separated or you suspect Dr. Badass may be compromised, report information to Command directly through the astral sphere. Use the G-12 pathway,” Ruby said.

_ Separated? And astral sorcery? I’ve never done this secret agent shit! _

Jared glared at Madison. If the situation got out of control they had an out, as long as Madison stuck with it, she was the teleporter. Madison caught his eye and gave him a look.

_ I hope that means she’s with me. _

Ruby glanced at the coffins. “Let’s get you loaded and we can take off.”

They  _ were _ going to fly to Vancouver inside the prison coffins.

Jared eyed the narrow, dark opening with trepidation, then saw his expression mirrored on Madison’s too young face.

“Let me go first,” Jared said, taking off his costume top and dropping it on the deck.

The bulk of the coffin’s astral warding and insulation raised the opening an awkward two feet above the deck. Jared grabbed the top rim with both hands and held himself precariously balanced. The slippery mass of wig hair ground under his fingers and palm as he crabwalked his feet inside. His back bumped over the padding and the vest was in his face. He shoved and pulled at the padding, moved the harness out of the way. A sharp lump caught in his fingers, the zipper of the vest snagged on the padding, he ripped it away from the fabric and slid inside. The wig, he threw in the footwell and shoved it down with one leg, then he strapped himself in.

He’d noticed the gentle hand touching his sweaty forehead and protecting his elbow from bumping into the metal edges of the coffin. He craned his neck and looked at Ruby’s upside-down face. She wasn’t smirking or laughing at him. She smiled tentatively and leaned into the coffin. The soft curve of her body stretched over his.

"Let me check your straps, make sure you're secure." Ruby stashed the water bottle in a cup holder that he hadn’t noticed and handed him the costume top.

"Sure," Jared said, slipping the top beneath the harness, on his left side.

Ruby gave him another upside-down smile. Jared held himself limp on the bottom of the prison coffin. She crawled carefully over him, her hands hardly touched his body as she wrapped her fingers around each strap and gave it a firm tug. He was amazed there was space for her because it had been tight getting in.

He looked at the fabric of the headrest. Perfectly curved hips shifted in his side vision as she moved further inside and checked the straps. The back of her hands pressed on his hipbones.

Sweat pooled in the hollow of his throat. He hoped she didn’t notice his reaction. Jared wrapped his identity cloak tighter around himself and stared at the lonely parachute button on a blank instrument panel. Each unit had individual oxygen and pressurization, but no lighting.

_ What idiot designed these things? _

Ruby tightened the straps and backed out. Her upside-down face gave him the shadow of a final smile … her face and raised arm were dark silhouettes against the evening sky as she placed a hand on the end of the coffin.

“Hey, if I stay still will you pick me up?” Jared blurted out.

Ruby smiled wider, a little nervously. “Angel and I will secure you in the bay and we’ll be en route soon.” She slid the top shut with a thud.

Darkness. His awareness of Ruby and Madison dimmed. These really were prison coffins.

The air turned stale and thin. Jared exhaled slowly, making each breath last. The coffin rattled and jolted from underneath, as he was being dragged into the bay of the aircraft and secured from below.

A lurch and a jump upwards: it wasn’t anything like an airplane or how he imagined a bird would fly. Jared wondered how Angel was moving the aircraft. Maybe he was carrying it in his hands? From what Ruby described, they were flying low, without lights or electronics because of Dr. Badass' superpowers, just faith in Angel …. Come to think of it, it was a fitting codename.

He took out his iPhone; no text from Gabe. Jared turned on the LED flashlight.

One of the clips of hair samples on the underside of his costume top dug into Jared’s side; he fumbled with the small bag of hair, hampered by the harness and padding. Finally, he got the thing wedged in and out of the way in the folds of plastic. Ruby had been emphatic about the padding and getting the harness buckles and bags of hair in case of sudden acceleration.

The air was making him spacey … it was hard to connect his thoughts together.

Lying there in the dark was a shitty way to travel.

His phone buzzed.

_ Ruby. _

He hoped she didn't notice how far out of it he was.

“Ruby,” Jared muttered groggily. He dropped the phone on his chest and let his arm drift to his side.

He tried to sound alert as Ruby gave him a run-down of the abort procedure. When she asked, he tried to explain that he'd never used his minion master powers before they were sealed and he didn't feel them now.

She cut him off, said that they were approaching the border of Atlantic and electronics couldn’t be trusted because of Dr. Badass.

Jared let the phone go dark. The padding and harness were digging into his side, but he felt too disconnected to adjust the straps. The team might need him to counter the power abuser, whoever it was … he needed to read the mission files, get a better sense of the situation ….


	2. Dean

####  **Dean. I-5 Northbound, between Bellingham and Vancouver.**

The grown-ups disappeared.

Dean jumped into the body. The truck in front got closer and closer. The dust, the shiny bars, the hinges on the back door - popped out. The autopilot was off - his legs pedaled superfast and the body leaned left - like Jensen was going to pass the truck. He couldn’t fall. Emily and Zach were in the trailer and they’d die.

Dean balanced the body and stopped the legs from pedaling.

The bike felt crinkly and shivered like a Christmas present in a box - it could break if he touched it wrong. He pushed the arms on the left a tiny bit and pulled a tiny bit and his body leaned by itself. The bicycle and the trailer bumped over the side of the highway and up a grass hill in front of pine woods.

The blades of grass and the leaves on the bushes, the angle of the hill, the feeling of where they would crash if he didn’t stop the bike, it popped into his brain all at once - too much. Dean shut it down like Containment taught him.

He dropped his bare toes on the cold grass. The bike shook and Dean wiggled the handlebars and dragged his feet lighter. They stopped at the edge of the woods.

_ That was scary! _

Dean jumped off the bike and landed on the grass, catching the bike and flicking the kickstand down with his big toe. The grown-ups’ body was cool. The supersenses were bad sometimes. It made things feel too close and shivery - he felt the wind on his skin underneath their superhero suit and other stuff - he didn’t know what it was - it was too confusing. The plastic gas mask smelled gross, but Containment always had to wear it because it was part of his costume.

Dean took away the superstrength in his arm and scrabbled with the lock on the trailer. The big arm and fingers didn’t move the way he wanted them to - it was frustrating - that’s what Containment called it. The clear plastic frame opened.

Emily and Zach sat inside. They looked small and slow - like kids - in the grown-ups’ body with their superpowers. Zach was two years younger than Emily and he sat squashed behind her. Emily held a white and purple swirl lollipop in one hand.

“Dean!” Emily started to talk in her usual, very loud and mean voice.

“Shh! Not so loud!” Dean whispered while Emily talked over him. The gas mask made his voice come out quiet and funny.

“What are you doing here? Where did Containment go?” Emily ignored him and kept talking. Dean didn’t like her very much.

“It’s a secret. Superhero secret ops,” Dean yelled through the mask.

“Oh,” Zach said flatly.

Emily sucked her lollipop, thinking. She said, “It’s cold, close the top--

“Noo,” Zach whined. “I want to get out.”

Emily stood up in the trailer, standing on her foot that wasn’t hurt and sucking on the lollipop. Zach crawled out around her leg. Emily sat back down and Dean closed the trailer top.

Dean had to keep watch over the other kids, because the adults weren’t around. A deep, piercing, aching pain in his stomach. The grownups didn’t need to eat, so their body was always hungry when he got in it.

Zach was squirming. He needed to go potty.

“Go potty in the bushes, Zach, potty,” Dean said. “Come on,“ he beckoned and then pointed at the trees.

Zach just looked at him for a while, then he got it and ran into the woods. Dean tracked Zach with his ears and watched Emily and the traffic zooming past on I-5.

Jensen and Containment were taking a long time coming back. Dean wondered if this counted as an emergency. He would call Uncle Lou if it got too scary.

_ Oh yeah. _

Dean got their cell phone out of the front bag. He set the alarm app for … what was two hours ahead …. The alarm clock was marked every two hours, so he just had to pick the next one … it’s 3:22, so two hours ahead’s 4:00 pm or 6:00 pm. It would be bad if he picked the wrong one. He remembered when he did it backwards and it didn’t ring and Jensen got mad.

Dean called Uncle Lou. The phone

rang … rang … rang…

Connected.

“Hello,” Uncle Lou said really super fast - like he always did.

“Uncle Lou, I gotta set the alarm clock for two hours to call you,” Dean said.

“... Yeah, hold on.” Uncle Lou said. He talked so his words were short and fast - but he wasn’t mad. Noises came through the phone, like Uncle Lou was walking around.

“Dee, you there?”

“Yeah,” Dean said.

“Tell me what happened,” Uncle Lou said.

“The grown ups went away. I’m by the side of the road. Emily and Zach are here.”

“Where are you exactly?” Uncle Lou said.

“Umm …,” Dean looked around. He was by the highway. By some bushes and trees. Jensen told him not to turn on the GPS location unless it was the emergency calling time and got really mad if Dean did stuff wrong.

“Are you on I-5?” Uncle Lou asked.

“Yeah!” Dean said.

“How are you?” Uncle Lou asked. “Can you breathe?”

“Yeah,” Dean said. “I’m okay. I can breathe and I have the grown-ups’ body, with their superpowers. It was scary stopping the bike! I’m okay,” Dean said quickly, so Uncle Lou wouldn’t worry. Dean looked at his feet and wiggled his toes. They were dirty but not bleeding or anything. “I can move my toes and they didn’t get all …,” ripped apart, Dean thought to himself.

“Dee,” Uncle Lou said. “How is your cloak?”

Dean felt safe and light nad happy. The feeling wasn’t right - Uncle Lou told him - because the cloak kept him safe from Atlantic and supervillains. He couldn’t tell Uncle Lou because Uncle Lou liked the cloak and wanted Dean to keep it on all the time - even though the cloak made him feel bad - heavy and dizzy.

“It doesn’t feel the same,” Dean said.

“How not--

Dean felt sleepy. He had to tell Uncle Lou. “I gotta go Uncle Lou, I’m falling asleep.” Dean hung up and threw the the cell phone in the bike bag: it slipped perfectly through the narrow opening and into the inside pocket. The grown ups’ body was really cool - and strong and fast.

Emily looked at him through the plastic top. Dean waved, “Bye,” he yelled through the mask.

####  Dean sat down on the grass and the earth swallowed him.


	3. Jensen

####  **Jensen. Emergency Task Force Meeting.**

Jensen fell asleep and dreamt that he stood in a control room in the Super Network’s headquarters. A blurry crowd of supers faced the main wall of monitors and four presenters. Three of the figures up front were distorted blurs running identity cloak, the fourth was Justice.

This was new and this wasn’t a good time. He’d been bicycling north on I-5 with Emily and Zach in the trailer.

Jensen raised his hand.

At the front of the room, a blurry figure whirled and pointed at Jensen. “Yes,” the man said in a low, gravelly voice distorted by identity cloak.

“My body’s in a tight spot--

“Your waking thought streams remain in control of your body. When the emergency task force meeting is over, your dreaming thought stream will return to your body and reintegrate. I recommend napping immediately upon your return,” the figure answered and then abruptly turned away. It had to be Castiel -- his mannerisms were weird enough to ID him through the cloak.

“Any other questions before we get started?” Castiel said.

Jensen’s thought streams didn’t work that way, but he didn’t press it. He’d been pedaling close to 120 mph to test out the new tires. Keeping to the speed limit made bicycling pointless and he needed an excuse to deflect Osric’s nagging. Containment would be in the body, or Dean.

Up front, Castiel poked haplessly at a laser pointer.

Jensen felt a tug on his elbow. Beside him, Osric’s blurry arm was attached to his arm by the elbow. Osric’s thought stream crossed his vague, incorporeal arms and snapped out: “If you’d keep to the speed limit you’d get fewer speeding tickets and you wouldn’t have to worry about the kids not that they’ll survive a bike going out of control at 120 and hitting the semi you were passing you are lucky you don’t have to pay insurance your rate would be astronomical.” He stopped his rant.

“Cyclists aren’t required to-

“I know,” Osric cut in. “That’s Justice up there, Field Commander for Oceanic Disaster Relief Operations from the Bay of Bengal to the Tasman Sea.”

He appreciated the thought. “Busy lady,” Jensen commented.

Justice stood with her long arms held loosely at her sides and watching the blurry crowd of supers. A cloaked presenter pulled up maps and images on the monitors. Two figures up front were looking at the malfunctioning laser pointer. “This is not what I expected when you described service in the Super Network.” Osric’s tone wasn’t curly with sarcasm, it was more … flat.

“How’d you get here?” Jensen asked quietly, leaning closer to speak to Osric privately.

Osric turned and spoke into Jensen’s ear. “As if I would know. Castiel’s got a strong call. My guess is he pulled me here along with you, since you’re containing my thought streams.”

“Ah,” Jensen said. Didn’t explain where Containment was, he handled interactions with the Super Network.

Osric grunted.

The figures up front gave up on the laser pointer. A blurry figure hopped on the operations control desk to wave his or her arms and point at a profile of the supervillain Papaver on the monitor:

The advance disaster relief team to the Philippines detected active mind control on the Vice President and tracked it back to the minion master, Papaver. The Network was arresting him. Superhero Justice would lead a small strike force, with the minion master Grilley running support.

First official mission since he’d taken on Osric as his handler.  _ This’ll make him happy-- _

Osric cut in, “Took em long enough. You I.D.’d that villain months ago while you were pretending to chase Dr. Teddy Bear into Afghanistan.”

The meeting droned on and on as a second, and a third presenter reported on the situation and the upcoming operation, estimated forces, supers under control, the psychics’ predictions, astral force mitigation guidelines.... One of the presenters crawled under a desk and fell asleep. It had to be Castiel, and even for him, this was weird.

“Pay attention!” Osric snapped. “You’re going to get me killed. I’m not going to remember this when I wake up.” He glanced at the figure underneath the desk. “Worry about that later. It’s not like we can do anything about it now.”

The fourth presenter spoke and then blurry figures raised their hands, asking the type of random nonsense people said in dreams. Most of the questions weren’t in intelligible english.

Osric reached across with his free arm, patted Jensen’s shoulder. “Keep my thought streams around when the meeting’s over. I want to be there when you talk to Chad and Grace of God. And I have a feeling I’m going to be pissed when I wake up.”

####  “Yeah, fine,” Jensen said, listening carefully.


	4. Jensen.

####  **Jensen woke up.**

His body crouched in front of the aerodynamic trailer pod attached to Containment’s bicycle. 6.3 meters down the slope, cars and trucks roared past on I-5. Two wavering furrows in the clean earth showed where Dean had dragged his feet to stop the bicycle. A rank, cloying smell came off his body. Fear sweat. No blood.

Emily sat inside the trailer pod, sucking on her lollipop. He saw her face change as she recognized him. Zach rambled between the trees with his childish, irregular footsteps.

A lump of Osric’s thought stream coiled and then relaxed in relief, “Hey, the kids aren’t dead. That’s a win.”

“You’re back,” Zach announced loudly. He ambled to a stop next to Jensen’s leg.

“How’d you get back?” Emily asked.

“Shh, it’s a secret, part of my superpowers. Other people can’t know,” Jensen answered in Containment’s cheerful, slow voice.

He was lucky she didn’t have the persistence of thought to follow up on her suspicions.

“Yeah! Like Dr. Teddy Bear, the bad guy, we won’t tell!” Emily yelled.

“Dr. Teddy the bad guy, he’s bad,“ Zach agreed loudly.

“If he knows he’ll hurt Dean because he can, um…“ Emily said, then paused to think.

_ Huh. She remembered Dean. _

“We’ve got to talk. You can’t go on like this,” Osric’s thought stream commented.

Jensen broke in, “Okay, you two think of what Dr. Teddy Bear might do to me or Dean if he found out and tell me when I get to Vancouver and we’re in a secure place, okay? Where no one else and no teddy bears can hear.”

The kids shouted a chorus of okays. Jensen picked up Emily to let Zach climb inside the trailer, then set her back down and pushed the shell closed. He watched Emi secure the latch on the inside, then got on the bike.

“What did you want to talk about?” Jensen said from inside his gas mask as he pedaled the bicycle and trailer up to speed on the shoulder of I-5.

Osric’s thought stream snapped, “Where do I even start. You know how screwed you are and by that, how badly you are screwing me?”

“Heh. As long as we’re enjoying ourselves,” Jensen answered bluffly.

Osric’s thought stream bristled angrily. “That is not remotely funny.”

The shoulder on the bridge over Dakota Creek was too narrow for the trailer. Jensen merged onto I-5, taking it slow.

Osric burst out: “The whole situation with Dean and your identity cloak … how long do you think you can keep it up? Bellingham isn’t big enough to hide in and I don’t care how crazy people are, hey, someone is gonna to notice. And do you seriously think Lucifer gave up being evil--

_ He did. Misha minionized him and modified his personality. _

“And this latest mission, if Castiel comes in and expects you to ditch the official mission and run secret ops  … he doesn’t arrange a cover story or an exit strategy, the rest of the Super Network thinks he’s dead except for Command and the other covert agents … how are you going to explain this? And I know I’m suspicious of the way he acts because you’ve thought--

The thought had crossed Jensen’s mind during the bloodbath in Guatemala that spilled south all the way into Columbia, that there would be less clean-up if he disappeared and Osric died. The more he saw of Castiel, the more certain he was that it was poor planning. It was a given the minion master had thought stream damage.

Castiel would be more direct if he wanted to kill Osric. He would order it, point blank.

Osric’s thought stream shifted and began to pull into itself.

“Yeah, okay, fine. I remember it now that you’re remembering it,” Osric’s thought stream muttered.

“What?”

“What do you mean, what? This is crazy. I can’t access my memories, just yours, and they don’t fit. It blows my mind, you and Dr. Teddy Bear have been faking an arch nemesis situation and … and destabilizing the Pac NorthWest supers.”

Jensen gave Osric a few moments to smooth out his thought streams. The flat open road with its mild, dumpy houses and farmland was a pleasant ride. He kept to the speed limit this time.

“Why would Command order this?” Osric demanded warily.

_ It was Misha, not Command.  _ “I just follow the orders--”

“Misha?” Osric asked curiously. “Who is that?”

“Classified,” Jensen said.  _ How did Osric’s thought stream pick up the name? _

He could practically feel Osric’s thought stream vibrate.

“It’s worked,” Jensen said. He’d always made it work in the past. And the enmity between himself and Lou wasn’t fake.

“Yeah ... yeah … well, they must be working together. Misha met with Lucifer and Dr. Teddy Bear and Castiel inserted Command’s orders in your thought stream. That’s not what worries me....”

“What?” Jensen asked.

“You can’t remember this?” Osric’s thought stream remarked thoughtfully. “You and Dr. Teddy Bear staged a fight and killed Warrior of God and Black Dog.”

Ah. He’d killed them. A flash of rage rose and then cut off.

“They … they … you went to them for help. I can see dual memories for the incident. You convinced them to help you kill Dr. Teddy Bear, trap him underground and he couldn’t escape with gravity negation like he always does.”

Jensen waited for Osric’s halting narration, letting the memories flood back as Osric triggered them. His legs pedaled the bike steady, his body balancing against the quiet, changing pressure of the wind.

“The other thought stream knew you were setting them up, but thought that ... that Ellen and Caleb were rogue supers from Midwest Region trying to move in. You and Dr. Teddy Bear trap and kill them in Lucifer’s base. There’s a third one, it’s harder to remember, slippery sucker ... it’s a cover-up for why Warrior of God and Black Dog died. The Midwest supers killed them, that’s why you, Lucifer, and Dr. Teddy Bear go after them. You cover it up afterwards because you break the Separation Agreement and you’re ... you’re on a watch list for removal from earth if you break another Agreement.”

Osric’s thought stream shivered and bristled in disgust. “I don’t believe this. I don’t want to believe this.”

Jensen said numbly, “That’s the one I remember, the third one. Castiel blocked the other memories.”

“Why?” Osric asked.

“They were good friends,” Jensen answered.

Osric was quiet. “Yeah … Ellen and Caleb, they helped you a lot. I remember your memories.”

They wheeled into Blaine, just south of the Canadian border. The flat, open space and the highway was calm and peaceful. It wasn’t far to the border crossing.

_ What’s he thinking about? _

Osric’s thought stream responded as if Jensen had asked the question out loud or displayed the thought, “Almost got my finger on it. Let me think.”

Jensen vaguely recognized the officer on duty and the officer definitely recognized him. She took his photo and waved him through when she got confirmation from Vancouver.

“This would be a lot easier if I could remember my memories and yours at the same time,” Osric’s thought stream remarked.

“Can’t. Sorry buddy,” Jensen said.

“Every other um--you don’t know the right word for it…. Every other thought stream Castiel called to that meeting was a sleeping thought stream … which, come to think of it, is stupid. Who calls up a meeting and all the people are in a fucking dream! And what the hell kind of plan is everyone show up in Syria?”

Jensen said, “It’s Castiel. He’ll have a core group like our last mission in Iraq and call minions as needed. The rest of us get into place.”

“No, no, that doesn’t make sense, Grilley’s backing this mission and he goes by the book. He wrote the book on minion masters.” Osric’s thought stream picked up an accusing note. “And we barely got out of Afghanistan alive. You’ve taken me on five covert missions, you lying liar, none of them had an exit strategy, and--

“Hey, I got us out of there every time. We’ll do the same in Syria. I’ll check if Quickstart’s in the group and we’ll use her exit,” Jensen interjected.

“Fine, fine… I expect to remember … I don’t know what I expect to remember, but it’s not matching your memories, which suck by the way. You’ve been mind-controlled and minionized too many times. Whatever I need to know, it’s in my semantic memory somewhere in my brain, not my waking thought streams.” Osric’s thought stream stiffened. “Any chance of you telling me about this?”

“No,” Jensen said.

“Why not?” Osric’s thought stream was flat. “Isn’t that what you recruited me for, I’m an extra thought stream to ... to strategize a way out of these situations while you’re busy murdering people?”

Jensen flinched, harsh--

Osric’s thought stream began riffling through Jensen’s memories too quickly and differently for Jensen to consciously recall. It was better that way. He didn’t want to trigger another mind control program and get flagged for investigation. He had broken enough Agreements for permanent ice, not just removal from earth. Being on a watchlist … that part he wouldn’t count on being untrue.

He trusted Osric to do right for the most part, the kid was idealistic. Not much of a kid any more, in his late twenties. Lordy, he’d been young when Jensen had recruited him.

Jensen took exit 37 onto Westminster. Why everyone called it Vancouver, even though B.C.’s Super Network Command Center was in Richmond, he didn’t know.

As he pulled up to the warded ground gate, the underflow of reaching for a memory and finding it missing, built close to his breaking point.

####  “You got to stop, it’s--


	5. Containment.

####  **Jensen fell asleep. Containment woke up.**

Blank.

His body was intact, balanced on their bike as it rolled over the retracted ground spikes and glass mosaic ward. The blue crystals flared clean. The camera on the gate to Vancouver SC stared at them. From above, he heard the disorienting rotor thwap and sharp, whining scream of one of Chad’s drones under AV location cloak. He glanced back; Emily and Zach were in the trailer. Osric’s thought stream lay quiescent and contained next to his own.

Containment got off the bike. He patted the trailer pod. Emily and Zach looked alert as he detached the pod. His energy reserve was high and even.

They must be checking in on their way to St. Paul’s.

Containment paused at the entrance to the low, rectangular hedge maze that doubled as the parking lot, guiding the bike in one hand and the trailer pod in the other. As he took the first step into the maze, he began to trace the fragile chain of unconsolidated memories backwards: the conversation with Osric, who was keeping oddly quiet, the trigger of a mind control program on Jensen, the task force meeting, and Dean’s memories.

Command was moving fast on Papaver and the disaster mapping from other universes looked risky long-term, for action or inaction against Papaver. He held the thought as he reached the entrance to the SC, stopped for another photo and scanned his ID. The inside of the building was torn up. He wheeled the bicycle and the trailer through the double doors into the airlock foyer. The interior wall of the airlock was partly dismantled, looked like remodeling, and the astral wards were down.

Across the brushed concrete floor and behind the reinforced reception desk, a woman stood up. She had a headset on, no name tag. “Superhero Containment,” she said in a placid voice. The other two women manning the reception desk looked busy at their computers. Jensen’s thought stream was asleep.

“Oz, do you recognize them?” Containment muttered.

“Good afternoon, ma’am,” Containment called out, his voice tinny and squeaky through the mask. “I’m heading to St. Paul’s to talk to Grace of God.”

“I’ll call ahead right away, sir,” the woman said.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said. “Is Quickstart in?”

Osric thought sharply: “No. And you don’t remember her. Any of them.”

“No, sir,” the woman answered. “Would you like to leave a message?”

“Nah, I’ll catch her another time.” Containment gave the woman a wave and a thumbs up and turned around.

He picked up the bicycle and trailer and jumped as carefully as he could over the low hedges and cars. “What’s the matter?” Containment asked quietly.

Osric’s thought stream muttered. “I didn’t realize ... you and Jensen are different people, you’re not just acting different.”

_ Huh. So Osric hadn’t figured that out yet. _ Containment had expected Osric to comment on the unnecessary interior remodeling, or the oddness of not recognizing the front line personnel at the SC.

Osric’s thought stream shifted.

“Jensen’ll wake up,” Containment said. “Atlantic’s master went a touch too far suppressing us. It’s a new one,”  _ And new that Castiel would allow another master to call me. If Castiel didn’t explain the situation to Justice and Grilley, and he might not…. _

“I don’t know how Atlantic will react to me being at the meeting. I mean, I obviously wasn’t supposed to be there.” Osric commented. “And I should stop being ticked off at Jensen for testing me, because you’re the one doing it.”

_ Huh. Fine, I’ll stop. _

Containment attached the pod and pedaled evenly towards St. Paul’s Hospital, cutting through a red light with a burst of speed. The scream of Chad’s drone diminished but did not fade away as they left the SC behind. It was convenient Chad liked the noise and style of the hovering electric drones; quiet, mechanical spybirds running on mechanical, clockwork wings and astral spells would burn more energy to track by eye and ear.

They were on a clear stretch on the road for the next 250 milliseconds. Containment triggered Control A and powered his super-senses. He felt his consciousness break apart under the onslaught of sensations.

Containments thoughts came back online and he took control of the body from Control A’s iffy autopilot, leaning right to bring the bike into balance against gravity. An unpowered drone in the shape of a white seagull wheeled in the sky over the Bay; it was distant - 10:1 it was one of Atlantic’s usual spybirds. The ground sensors around St. Paul’s were active. Calculating the schedule on the astral surveillance satellites suggested two satellites were within range and Rob might be overhead on one of his service runs.

His body ached with a vague feeling of ill-health - the astral warding over Vancouver was well-maintained and interfered with excess power use.

“That was unreal. Are you going to talk to Chad or let his drone follow you all the way to St. Paul’s? He’s never done this before…. Yeah. I checked your memories, he’s never done this before,” Osric’s thought pulsed.

_ I’m letting his drone follow me to St. Paul’s. If I release you, what do you think you’d do? _

“...I,” Osric’s thought stream looped inside of itself and reformed. “I’m not sure I would do anything.”

_ Why not? _

“I don’t know any of this stuff. I don’t know what’s going on.” Osric’s thought popped out unhappily.

_ I want to leave you behind for Papaver. _

“Thanks.”

_ It would help if you’d think of a reason to leave you behind without arousing your suspicions. _

“Am I going to remember any of this when I wake up?” Osric demanded.

_ Not under my control, buddy. You might remember fragments, like a dream. The memory won’t be easy to consolidate. _

“Fine. Yeah…. I don’t know. You’re always lying about going places to treat Dean’s thought stream damage. Just make up an excuse and send me … inside Atlantic. There might be a conference or training I could go to … Gil might know. And here I thought travel would be easier once I got in the Network--

The last piece of Osric’s thought floated out unintentionally. Their thought streams were getting entangled. He would need to release Osric soon.

“...They’ll pick me up for questioning when I cross the border and figure it out,” Osric finished.

Two thoughts crossed Containment’s mind, neither of which would make Osric happy.

Osric’s thought stream stayed quiet. Maybe he hadn’t noticed.

Containment prodded Jensen again, but no response. Dean was sleeping and consolidating his memories after dropping into the body without cloak. Hopefully no one on I-5 or monitoring him by satellite had paid attention at the time. Osric was right about the situation.

_ Hear that? _

“You just can’t help yourself can you?” Osric’s thought stream flattened in annoyance.

_ What? _

…

_ Cone on, don’t be like that. _

“You saw this coming years ago, why didn’t you do something about it?”

_ I hired you to cover for me. _

“Yeah, that’s just added to your problems,” Osric’s thought floated out without remorse. “Atlantic doesn’t trust you, even with Castiel holding you in his call. I don’t know why. The whole situation....” Osric stopped to think. “I know you can’t talk about it, but you need to get to Misha. He might release you, if you asked him.”

_ Why? _

“Shut up. Lemme finish. The problem is the mind control and the trigger programs, but we can’t do anything about that, at least, not right now. Castiel’s memory replacement just adds BS that screws everything; I mean, you can’t figure out who it’s safe to talk to if you’re on a different memory stream than everyone else and I can’t check my memories against yours?”

_ Can’t. _

“Yeah. And then Misha limiting your action-repertoire and making his own memory modifications. If there was one less thing to deal with…. And he’s definitely not on ice like you think he is. I’m pretty sure--

_ That’s even worse. Can’t help my thought coming out, keep going. _

“Fine. He hasn’t made use of you, even when he could have. I don’t know, it’s worth a shot,” Osric snapped out.

Containment cut between a silver Hyundai Elantra and an oversized black, Ram pickup, and they reached the brick edifice of St. Paul’s Hospital. He burned rubber and stopped at the corner under the rooftop garden.

“Hey ... watch the tires,” Osric mumbled slowly. The emanations from the heavily warded hospital were suppressing them both.

This late in the afternoon, Grace of God’s petitioners had trickled down and the line barely edged out of the doorway; a group of four waited outside.

Containment detached the trailer, picked up his bike and lifted the pod over his shoulder. He walked up the corner of the building with one hand, gripping carefully to avoid damaging the bricks. At the slight overhang to the rooftop garden, he repositioned the pod to avoid jostling the kids. Two women stood leaning on the decorative railing of the rooftop garden four meters away. They were deep in a conversation about a mutual friend or acquaintance and politely ignored him. He jogged through the park to the wall of the ambulatory care building, conveniently ledged at one story intervals, and jumped lightly up the ledges to the roof.

The buzzing scream of Chad’s drone died away.

Containment towed the pod to the central rooftop entrance on the helipad before he gave Emi a look. She popped open the trailer and he lifted her out. She stood with careful attention, balanced on one foot, leaned on Containment’s thigh with her left arm, while her right arm tipped a lime green water bottle into her mouth. Zach crawled out of the pod and started to squirm.

“I’m done,” Emi said and held out the bottle to him.

From the stairwell, Containment heard Grace of God’s ringing. He lifted Emily around the ribs and she levelled out with her torso horizontal. “Over here,” he said to Zach, walking to the elevator. Zach trailed behind disconsolately with his usual depressed attitude.

“Superhero Grace of God,” Containment called out politely as the ringing neared the door.

Grace of God spoke through the stairwell door, the distortion and echoes turned her smooth voice into a discordant clamor. “Containment, it is an unpleasant circumstance that I must meet you.” The glowing super pushed open the emergency door and floated out. ”Who needs healing?”

She was naked under the light; her excess astral flux was low.

Emily covered her eyes with one hand and turned her head away. “Zach, cover your eyes--

“Emily,” Containment answered over Emily’s chatter, flicking one eye to the girl.

“...like this! Like this Zee! Don’t look, it’s too bright,” Emily said with an urgent note in her voice. Zach blinked and slowly put one hand up to cover his eyes.

Containment put her down and Emi balanced on one foot. Grace of God floated slowly to Emi and touched her with a finger. Emi looked down with a concentrating face and wiggled her bare foot.

“What do you say, Emi,” Containment prompted.

“Thank you, Superhero Grace of God,” Emi said. She squint up at the superhero, looking between her fingers.

“You are welcome,” Grace of God said, a hint of kindness in her voice.

To Containment, she snapped, “What else?”

“Surveillance on B.C. while you’re gone,” Containment said.

“Done. Speak with Todd. You have his number,” Grace of God said haughtily.

“Coordinator Aronauer will want your personal approval,” Containment said.

“I have given it to him,” Grace of God said. “Is that all?”

“You have new personnel in Vancouver Super Center,” Containment said.

“My personnel are not your business. Wait here for Todd. You will not enter my hospital,” Grace of God ordered curtly.

The elevator chimed. The doors slid open and Coordinator Todd Aronauer stepped out, his hair cut even shorter than usual, and dressed in a dull red and gray plaid shirt, slacks, and suit jacket.

“I have given Containment permission for surveillance. He is not to enter St. Paul’s except in the case of an emergency,” Grace of God said.

“Yes, of course. I’ll connect him right away,” Todd said.

Grace of God nodded once in approval.

Containment gestured at the kids, “Go on.” “Zach needs to pee,” he said by way of explanation.

“I will take care of them,” Grace of God cut in; she floated into the elevator. Emily entered the elevator hesitantly, squinting up at the superhero, while Zach strode inside without acknowledging the tense interaction.

“Remember to fill your water bottle,” Containment said.

Emi moved her head and torso a little and he knew she’d heard him.

“Todd, what’s your analysis?” Containment asked. The elevator doors slid closed.

“We think the risk of attack is minimal,” Todd said and adjusted his glasses. “One of the interns did the assessment. I’ve been busy with logistics for Typhoon Haiyan.”

_ Just one, huh. _

“Who’s leading the team for the Typhoon?” Containment asked.

“Justice, out of Atlantic,” Todd said.

“Of course. I’ll need a records update,” Containment said.

Todd said, “Dr. Badass prepared a key,” and held out a flash drive and a tiny blue plastic rectangle.

“What is this?” Containment asked.

“It’s a key. Plug it in a USB and you can log onto Vancouver’s security system with your Gmail account. Dr. Badass set the PIN to the last four digits of your Super Network ID number,” Todd explained patiently. “I sent an email with login instructions and a link to the website.”

“Thanks,” Containment said, taking the tiny key. “Earlier … when I stopped by the SC, you have a couple new people. The interior wards were down.”

Todd’s expression changed for a split-second. Containment couldn’t tell what the guy was thinking past his bland, professional poker face. “A petitioner, Mikey, is doing remodeling for us, minor--

Osric’s thought was dense and quick: “Tell him. He’ll notify Atlantic or take action.”

“A drone followed me,” Containment interrupted. “It backed off when we got to the roof garden.”

Todd looked concerned. “I’ll check with--” he broke off. “If you’ll move to the edge of the roof to minimize astral interference….”

“Sure,” Containment said. He wheeled the bicycle and trailer to the edge of the roof and turned around. Watching Todd’s back, it looked like the coordinator drew on his left forearm with a device hidden by his body. Sound dampened and the pale light of the afternoon dimmed in an irregularly spherical mass centered around Todd.

This was ... flashy. He scanned the air. No sight or sound of one of Chad’s drones, but the satellite surveillance might be getting this.

The coordinator continued to draw like he was cartooning a novel.

Inside the frame pack on his bike, his cell phone buzzed with an urgent text.

Containment flinched and dropped containment on Osric’s thought stream; it recoiled, a quick, fleeting sense of it slipping south, returning to Osric’s body.

_ Should have turned off the phone. _

His phone rang. The sensation tugged at him. He had to answer.

“Hey … hey, Todd,” Containment muttered. His voice came out small and muffled.  _ Doubt Todd heard the sound. _

Without his volition, his hand reached into the frame pack and closed on the ringing cell phone.

It was Chad. His finger tapped--

A cheerful, jazzy sax solo rang … he didn’t like it. The text scrolled under his finger as he tapped the phone icon and swiped ....

_ I don’t have a Becky in my contacts. _

“Yeah,” Containment said.

“OMIGOD, CONTAINMENT,” Becky shrieked.

It was Becky, his superfan.


	6. Becky

“Omigod, Containment!” Becky screamed. This was it! She was talking to him!

“Hey, Becky. How ya doing?” Containment’s tinny, muffled voice melted her heart. If only he took off his mask when he wasn’t under attack from villains, hardly anyone used suppression gas grenades anymore and the mask made him sound silly.

“I can’t believe you answered! I don’t know how I got this phone number, but I just had to call you! I had to tell you…,” her voice lowered into a hoarse, hissing whisper, “...that, that... person ... Christie, the head of Seattle’s superfan meetup group, the one who’s a fan of Dr. Teddy Bear... she’s coming to Bellingham ... tonight.” Becky couldn’t help her voice from cracking and wavering.

“Right, thanks,” Containment said calmly. He was always grateful, generous and warm-hearted.

Getting down to business, Becky said: “I’ve invited her to stay my place, so I can keep an eye on her.”

“Good, great,” Containment said, supportive as always.

“So that’s all. I hope you’ll come home soon. Sources tell me that you were seen leaving Bellingham headed north,” Becky said … hoping….

“Yeah, yeah,” Containment said brusquely. He always acted this way about his high-speed cycling. It was his one bad point, the reckless cycling. Everyone in town knew about it. Osric complained about it all the time, though not to her. What if he hit a car?! Normal people could be killed!

“With two kids in your trailer going 120 miles per hour on I-5.”

“Yeah, I slowed down aft--

She knew it! He wasn’t careless with people’s lives! Especially the kids he mentored! She rushed to finish because he had to hear this quick: “I know it must have been an emergency, and you taking over as Class One to defend B.C. while Grace of God leaves for the Philippines for disaster relief… you must have a lot to discuss with her. Have you got everything you need?”

“Uh, yeah, yeah, I suppose--

“Good, come right home then. And if you have time, I know you’re so busy …,” Becky coaxed. “Drop by and talk to Christie. She’ll change her mind if she meets you. And she’s a very good amateur astral sorcerer. She might be helping Dr. Teddy Bear with a nefarious plan.”

_Oh right, the message._

“So remember, don’t listen to anyone else, no talking with other supers, no chatting with them on the phone or reading text messages or anything! Come right home and check in with Osric. He’s been home all day, not doing anything, he didn’t even leave the house once. Tamara told me, she was watching your house in case you guys did superheroic deeds,” Becky said, delivering the VERY IMPORTANT MESSAGE.

Click.

She’d hung up. Why?!!! She should have talked to him longer! And told him she’d make that pain in the butt cheesecake with strawberry glaze! It was Dean’s favorite!

Her phone blurred. Becky collapsed onto her bed, brightly decorated with a printed comforter of a cartoonish, gas-masked figure of Containment capturing a teddy bear with a blob supposed to be a vacuum cleaner, a drawing Eric’d made back when the town’s fan club had been bigger. Becky liked his vacuum cleaner the best, the leaf blower Containment used now didn’t have the same appeal.

Becky rolled onto her back and lifted her legs onto the bed. The foam mattress sunk compliantly under her weight and she closed her eyes. There was a tiny eensy-little time before Christie got here. She’d take a short nap and wake up feeling refreshed and ready!


	7. Misha

####  **Misha:** ** _Finally._**

Misha tucked the second bypass key, the one meant for Containment, inside a rubber case and slipped it into his toolbelt. It might come in handy later ... though Containment was now heading uselessly south to Bellingham, leaving him without a combat super for the next step of the operation. Even with susceptibility to minionization, the woman’s thought streams had been exceedingly difficult to modify. Misha missed the fine control of his younger days.

Thinking of it just now, Misha drew the emergency call-up on the case of his cell phone with a careful swipe of his finger.  _ Excellent opportunity to use the spell _ . The lights on the portal flashed - which way did it go? Misha turned the case in his hand and shook it. The phone dinged - Misha glanced around - his cloak held: cars passed on the road, the drivers and passengers unnoticing him -  the whining of Chad’s drones returned to Vancouver SC after tracking Containment to St. Paul’s remained as they were -- the screen flashed:

1.2 hours. The Arrow. 

_ Good. _

The phone buzzed with a call - Ruby - at the moment the noisy scream of Dr. Badass’ drones stopped.  _ Excellent work.  _ The mission continued in a direction towards multiple possible desired outcome scenarios.

Misha swiped the phone to answer Ruby’s call and scuttled into the grassy ditch surrounding Vancouver SC. He would be his own strike force for the--

Someone was watching him--

**A wall slammed down.**


	8. Jared

####  **A wall slammed down.**

Jared reeled back and fell through space.

A red thread flashed in front of him and he grabbed it and held on. The single strand of silk slipped between his fingers - his lifeline. The heady scent of chocolate and blackberries and earth filled his nostrils and belly. Distant points of light appeared and disappeared in the dense, amorphous space.

Guillotine blades snapped in his vision and he flinched and snatched his fingers away. The thread disappeared into the darkness.

Jared oriented his thoughts and body. Scents wafted and the space resisted him viscously, as if he fell through a living, pulsating body. Dim sensations of ease or unease grew and faded as he turned.

The blades had been an illusion. Ruby’s silken hair and her scent of chocolate through their synchronization, he let her go. And it wasn’t likely to return.

Jared spread his arms long, longer, reaching for the nearest, stable place, an escape.

A huge maw of teeth, thickly mucous saliva connecting the upper and lower jaw, spinning screaming saws, grinding metal teeth -- rushed at him. High screams shattered his ears and blood trickled down his neck. He closed his eyes and headed through, his body shaking, keeping his heading to the place he … trusted.

The air changed. Jared opened his eyes. He dropped out of the sunbleached blue sky over a grassy park: open, dotted with large trees. An impression of a steep, wooded slope leading down to water. A flat lawn of dry, yellow, grass surrounding two large trees. The leaves on the trees rustled. A trill bird cry - chick-a-dee-dee-dee - rang out.

The tree loomed.

Branches and large leaves smashed into his face and arms and whipped his torso and legs. Jared fell out of the leaves and bounced on the springy earth: it gave like a trampoline, softened into a welcoming mound of pillows.

A noise.

Jared jerked his body to face the sound. The grass-studded dirt ground hardened under his body, supporting him.

A kid dressed in a bright orange hoodie and jeans landed on the flat, dry, packed-dirt in front of the tree roots. Looked like he’d jumped off a nestled sitting spot that the angled first branch of the tree made with the trunk. He looked … young, but grown, not a toddler, maybe five, six, seven, eight? It was hard to tell.

The twin trees grew close together. The massive trunks rose out of the earth a few feet from each other and the roots merged. Both of the trees’ lower branches looked worn and smoothed from climbing. The crook of the trunk and the lowest branches of each tree made comfortable-looking sitting spots sized for the kid, and higher up, the smaller branches of the two trees twined into a high sit spot. Large, fat-bodied spiders, probably full of venom, crawled on the tree trunks and roots with thin, spindly legs.

“Hey,” Jared said. He stayed sitting, but drew his legs close. The kid looked fast. “I’m Jared.” He held out his hand … maybe the kid--

The kid raced forward, took Jared’s hand in both of his own and backed up to help Jared up.

Jared stood. The bags of hair samples on his poncho swung and clattered. The plastic was slashed in deep stripes and flapped open, but not dirty. The dirt dropped cleanly off his clothes and hands, as if it didn’t exist. Reaching into his clothes and rubbing a hand over his chest, Jared felt raised lines of welts, no pain with it. From his neck, dark flecks of dry blood came off his fingers.

He towered over the skinny little guy. The kid’s stubby, mohawk bump looked soft and furry and Jared wanted to ruffle the kid’s mound of hair.

“What’s your name?” Jared asked. He heard himself speak, the bleeding from his ears hadn’t affected his hearing.

“Dean,” the kid said, looking up at him. The sound echoed strangely. A low, buttery, caramel and chocolate scent wafted through the air.

Jared crouched to make himself shorter. “Where am I?” Jared asked.

The kid looked down. Jared couldn’t see his face, but the kid clearly didn’t want to answer; with his bad luck with supernatural powers, this was a secret-keeper or guardian construct. It would be harder to get out of here without the kid’s cooperation.

Jared kneeled on the dirt - that gave beneath him forgivingly, cushioning his knees - and gently drew the boy close with one arm. “Hey, it’s ok. Do you know how I got here?”

Dean shook his head and looked blankly up at Jared. “No. I dunno. You fell out of the sky.”

Jared’s stomach growled loudly.

The kid quickly stuffed a hand into a pocket and took out a handful of white jelly beans. He held the candies out in his palm, and looked up at Jared.

He couldn’t read the kid’s face. It would be rude to refuse the gift of food.

“Thanks,” Jared said. The kid’s hand didn’t feel too grubby. He looked … pretty clean. Jared scooped the jelly beans into his mouth and bit down. The white crust of the candies burst into sweet, gummy delicacies.  _ Nice. _

Dean’s face lit up.  _ Cute kid, eager to please. _

“Don’t suppose you have a meal?” Jared asked. He rubbed a hand over the welts on his stomach. He didn’t feel pain, but he was starving. He would need energy to get out of this place.

The kid’s face beamed with delight and he nodded rapidly, making his head bob on his thin neck. The kid kneeled on the ground and scraped a shallow depression into the earth; it seemed hard-packed and dry … difficult to work with.

Jared dropped his arm and sat beside the kid, let him work in peace. The earth felt like it would open easily for his hands, but this was the kid’s space. The little guy worked intently, concentrating. Jared looked around. The clearing was an island in nothingness; the reality faded away and blurred only fifty or sixty feet out on the lawn. Leafy green bushes and tall, spindly trees formed a see-through wall past the two, large trees. From the grass, it looked like a trail ran beside the wall of vegetation. The trees were huge and looked realistic.

Dean popped up, scanned the ground, turning his whole head to look, and then bounced around the clearing, looking at pebbles, bits of rock, and stubby, broken branches. There wasn’t much litter on the ground. Dean picked up a short, sturdy stick and poked it into the bottom of the depression, scraping at it.

A trickle of water darkened the dirt. Dean set the stick aside and they watched as the depression slowly swelled into a muddy pothole too small to be called a puddle. It was big enough for Dean to get one hand into it. He lifted a handful of the water to Jared, looking hopeful.

Jared wasn’t thirsty enough to drink mud, but this wasn’t real. As Jared watched, the dirt settled in the crevices of Dean’s cupped hand and the water looked clearish, clear enough to drink. Jared held Dean’s hand in his own and guided the water to his mouth.

The mouthful tasted like thick gravy-like broth: rich, salty, filling, heavy with fat and sweetness, and the taste of the butter and chocolate aroma that permeated the air. His tongue chased the droplets of liquid across Dean’s palms, the layer of mud burst into flavor, meaty, little pieces of hamburger. Jared caught himself.

Dean didn’t look weirded out by the lick. He looked … happy … ecstatic.

“That was amazing. Wonderful. Really,” Jared said.

Dean leaned on Jared’s legs and snuggled close, keeping his adoring on Jared’s face.

“There’s more, by the water. A lunch spot. Come on!” The kid jumped up and broke into a dead run across the clearing and partway down the slope - a drop concealed by leafy green bushes, then just as suddenly stopped and turned around, waiting for Jared to catch up. The kid was fast; he’d made it fifty feet before Jared got to his feet.

Jared jogged over the dry, smooth-packed dirt. The edge of brush bordering one side of the clearing hid a dirt trail leading steeply down the hill. Dean ran ahead, turning and keeping Jared in sight.

Red fruitlet berries, stood out above the green leave; fat, half-spheres of raspberries. Jared picked one and popped it in his mouth. It came off the stem easily: seedy berries, with a complex and nuanced flavor. Jared rolled them in his mouth, tasting it like a fine wine. The delicate, delicious, intensely chocolaty aroma grew heavier.

Dean ran back to his side.

“These are good,” Jared said.

“There’s more,” Dean said in his fast, breathless voice. He didn’t help Jared pick the berries, just stood by Jared’s side, watching Jared attentively.


	9. Jared

####  **Dean stood beside Jared.**

Looked like he wanted to talk. Jared paused, popping another berry in his mouth and looked at the kid.

“I like Skylanders,” Dean stated. “Me and Becky play, but we keep losing all the time because we don’t have strong Skylanders,” Dean gave a breathless half-giggle. “For my birthday, Becky made me my favorite cheesecake and gave me a watermelon with dollar bills taped all over it! I have a hundred dollars saved up for Skylanders.”

_ How expensive are these things? A birthday party? _

“Nice. I like Super Smash Brothers,” Jared said.

“Becky’s friend Tamara plays that. She doesn’t let me play,” Dean shook his head to match with his words. ”Sometimes I can’t move my arms and legs.”

_ What the--  _ “When does that happen?!” Jared burst out.

“Just sometimes,” Dean said dismissively.

Jared didn’t want to break the construct, but he was curious …. “Where did you come from?” he asked.

“Texas,” Dean said promptly. “I moved to Bellingham a long time ago, I don’t remember it.”

_ Huh.  _ “Me too,” Jared said. “Born and raised.”  _ He’s a little young, but,  _ “What’s your team?”

Dean huffed. “The Cowboys and the Seahawks. Uncle Lou said I could have two.”

“Cowboy here,” Jared said.  _ Interesting. _

“Dean, where are all these people?” Jared asked.

Dean looked confused.

“Uncle Lou and Becky, and uh ...”

“Tamara,” Dean filled in.

“Yeah, her,” Jared said.

“I don’t know,” Dean said it with bewildered confusion, like he was thinking, how would I know? Jared was getting better at reading him. Dean’s voice and body showed his heart, even if the kid’s face only made four expressions: blank, confused, ecstatically happy, and downcast.

Jared didn’t know what to say. “Cool, cool, that’s fine Dean.”

When the berries were picked out, Jared rubbed a hand over the kid’s soft, brushy head. Dean gave a half-giggle, then looked up at Jared, asking for permission.  _ Don’t know what he’s asking for _ .

“Go on,” Jared said.

The kid burst away from his hand like a rocket and skipped down the packed dirt trail, the top of his stubby mohawk bouncing up and down along with the rest of him. The wide, dirt trail headed out of the sunlight and between old growth trees studded with moss and interspersed with patches of large sword ferns and brush. The path switch-backed down to the shore. Dean kept ahead, stopping to wait whenever he got to a place on the trail where Jared wouldn’t be able to see him. Considerate kid, very mature.

“Hey, how old are you?” Jared called out.

Dean turned around and took a deep breath, then froze, pressing his arms by his sides and hunching his slim shoulders. “I’m … I’m six,” he said, braced for any sign of Jared’s disapproval.

Jared jogged up to the kid, gave him a big smile, and ruffled his stubby hair. His hand fit right over the kid’s head. Dean gave a half-giggle and relaxed. He touched the top of his head, like he was checking it was still there.

“Walk with me,” Jared said.

“Okay,” the kid said, looking up at Jared. Jared ruffled the kid’s head again, and got the same half-giggle.

Dean stuck close by, walking at first. Their strides didn’t match. Dean trotted beside Jared, then forgot and skipped ahead, caught himself and stopped, turned his head back and glancing up. Jared smiled and jogged up to the kid, ruffled his hair again. Dean half-giggled, then skipped ahead and turned around to skip back. The kid was fast on his feet; he skipped faster than Jared’s jog and bounced up a foot; impressive.

The trail switch-backed across the slope eight times and levelled off by the shore, blocked by thick stands of trees and brush. A few minutes jog, and then the trees opened to a steep climb down to a short, sandy beach. A white and gray driftwood log lay lengthwise and looked out over the dark water. If this was an astral representation of Bellingham, the water would be the Pacific Ocean. Jared looked at Dean. The kid shook his head, “The grownups sit there.”

_ Huh. _

“Who are the grownups?” Jared asked.

Dean froze. The kid gave off a sick feeling of unwilling acceptance. He was going to answer, but didn’t want to. Didn’t think he had a choice.

Jared ruffled his hair and squeezed the little guy’s shoulders. “You don’t have to tell me,” Jared said. “Is it a secret?”

“Yeah,” Dean said. “It’s a secret.” He looked up at Jared solemnly.

“Come on,” Jared said. He didn’t want to hurt the kid or this space: it was a living creature’s mind.

They jogged on. Dean stopped where the trail broadened and split through loose brush and around a large, hollowed-out tree about thirty feet off the trail through hard-packed earth and bushes. Heavy waves pounded rock up ahead. “What’s the matter?” Jared asked.

Dean thought for a moment. “I don’t know,” he said.

Jared crouched to see the kid’s face. He looked ... uncertain. The kid wasn’t saying everything he knew.

A switch flipped in Dean’s head. “Over here.” The kid sprinted through the brush to the hollow tree and straight through the dark, triangular opening.

Jared ran after the kid and ducked down to enter the hollowed out tree. He didn’t need to stoop far. The opening was large and the tree was huge: six or seven feet across on the inside. Light came in from two large holes in the trunk. Dean waited next to the lowest hole; the bottom edge of it was at the height of Dean’s head, maybe four feet up. The opening looked out over the brush in the direction they’d been traveling in. Jared didn’t see any better from inside of the tree.

The kid touched the bottom edge of the hole and awkwardly dragged a large, heavy plate of food out of the air. Jared grabbed for the plate, covering Dean’s hands: the plate was piled with small rectangles of thick cut steaks on the bone - juicy and glistening with fat, laid on top of cooked leafy greens, surrounded by a salad with bright red, white, yellow, orange vegetables and pickles and chunks of crumbly white cheese, brown rice mixed with wild rice and herbs and spices, and sludgy, fragrant black beans.

“For me?” Jared said. His stomach growled at the smell.

Dean bobbled his head in a nod.

“This is great, wonderful,” Jared said. He sat down cross-legged and held the plate in his lap. Dean sat alertly beside him.

“What’s the matter?” Jared asked. He looked at the way Dean held his body. Jared wrapped an arm around the kid’s shoulder and gently squeezed and released him. “I can’t eat until you tell me,” Jared said. He gave the kid another gentle squeeze.

The kid looked down at his lap and shrunk down. He didn’t know, or didn’t want to say it. He looked up, hurt confusion on his face.

“Can I see what’s going on?”

Dean hesitated.

“Is it dangerous?” Jared asked.

Dean looked at Jared’s face. He nodded. “Yeah. A ‘lil. But the grownups are okay.”

“Is there a safe place we can go? Where I can watch?”

“Yeah.” Dean popped up on his feet and looked ready to run out.

“Wait,” Jared said quickly. “Where?”

Dean pointed back the way they’d come.

“All the way back, huh?” Jared said.

Dean nodded.

“I’ll eat and walk. Stay next to me. I need you to watch my back,” Jared said.

“Okay,” Dean said, his face and posture changed and became more serious as Jared’s request modified the kid’s mindset. Jared didn’t expect a six-year old, realistic human construct to maintain the responsible attitude for a long time, or to … not get distracted or lose track of what he was doing … but he’d take what he could get.

“Come on,” Jared said. He dug into the steak as they walked. The meat was soft, fatty, and rich ... almost overpowering. Jared dug into the salad and sides with his fingers to balance the fat richness. He licked his fingers and avoided ruffling Dean’s hair. The steep hike back up to the shade of the twin trees went faster and easier than he thought, with the distraction and the food.

Dean kept up his guard duty all the way. At the edge of the clearing, he looked up at Jared for permission.

_ Wonder what he’s going to do. _

Jared nodded.

The kid raced to the nearest tree and clambered expertly over bulging roots and into the angled crook of the tree trunk and the first branch; the spiders, fat-bodied with venom, moved out of his way and the thorns and rough bark didn’t seem to hurt the kid.

“Look! Here,” Dean said. Tinny road noises played from a small knothole where a branch had been cut close to the trunk. The hole was small and Jared couldn’t see into it from the ground.

Jared looked at the thorns and the large, fanged spiders on the trees and crawling over the massive protruding roots. He didn’t think the spiders were an illusion. This place felt too real.

“I can’t see from the ground … and I don’t like the look of those spiders,” Jared said.

Dean looked around. “Shoo,” he waved his arms at the spiders. The arachnids crawled away, leaving a path to the bole.

The thorns looked like a bear, hard but manageable. Jared set the plate on the dirt and scrubby, trampled grass - mowed too short like the lawn that faded into nothingness several meters past the clearing. The pothole had grown larger, into a tiny, muddy spring.

_ Wonder what that means. _

Jared stepped onto the thick roots; he felt the hard bark through the thin soles of his shoes. The tree tolerated him, but weren’t welcoming like the earth or Dean. He clutched the first branch of the tree and hauled himself up in the crook, bending his knees and scrunched his body into the small space. The thorns … faded away under his hands and Dean scrambled higher.

Jared braced himself on the branch and the trunk and tilted his head sideways. The view was … weird. He lurched, dizzy, losing his --

Dean’s small hands tugged at his left arm and Jared latched on. The kid was strong. Jared grabbed the rough, mossy bark of the trunk with his legs, thorns be damned, and leaned back against the branch, grabbing it from below with his right hand. He let go of Dean’s forearm gently - didn’t want to hurt the kid - and grabbed the branch overhead.

Dean looked okay. The kid promptly scrambled down and sprawled out over Jared’s body, tucking himself neatly in the edges, a clean, tidy kid, treating Jared like a hammock.

Jared looked sideways over the tuft of Dean’s hair. He couldn’t hold this position long.

Through the small bole of the tree, a video played silently and sucked him inside:

A short asian man sat on a worn L-shaped couch in a shabby living room-office. Jared hovered in the air looking down at a 30 degree angle. The man’s eyes were open, but he stared into nothing. The couch made a hallway between the reinforced front door and what looked like a roomy kitchen, the same size as the living room.

A large LCD monitor hung from the wall and scrolled through high resolution security footage of roads, a forest, and other images around a town. The look of the vegetation and the earth placed the location in the Pacific Northwest or B.C. Region. A small laptop was open on the cheap, plywood table. The screen was dark. An astral warding bracelet glittered on the man’s wrist, but the room was otherwise empty of sorcery. The bracelet flared blue.

_ Tink. _

The ward shattered and the metal links slipped off the man’s wrist.


	10. Osric

####  **Osric slouched on the couch in the living room.**

It’d been past noon in his last clear memory and he’d sat in a daze as the sun set.

_ Wonder what time it is? _

Everything hurt. His body ached. His limbs felt disconnected. A hard piece of metal wedged painfully in his crotch. Osric curled and flexed his fingers and shifted his weight. The watch Gil’d brought him from Atlantic shifted and slid down to the leather couch seat. Osric moved his hand and dipped it between his legs, fumbling numbly, clumsily. His hand closed on it smoothly.

The band had broke where it attached to the watch face. Osric grabbed the remote off the back of the couch and turned on the lights. A bluish rainbow sheen discolored the link next to where the band had broken.

_ That’s weird. _

Osric tried to set the watch on the table, missed: it dripped over his knee and slithered onto the floor with a dull clunk. His body worked, but it didn’t feel right. It was like he looked at himself from outside and wasn’t all the way in his body.

The large LCD monitor hanging on the wall to his right scrolled through security footage from cameras set up around the house, the neighborhood and at key points in Bellingham and in Whatcom County; a basic anti-supervillain security measure he’d pushed through with Containment and Lou - not that it mattered.

The laptop on the cheap, plywood coffee table was open. He’d been checking on Typhoon Haiyan’s progress before the memory loss. Underneath the table, the hard shell case with his M110 sniper rifle rested openly in sight. He should put it in the gun safe.

The sliding glass door to the back yard was an icy, gaping black hole in the shell of the house. Physically, the house looked untouched.

_ Click. _

Metal clicked on metal in the kitchen.

Osric put a hand on the back of the couch and jumped over it, landing lightly on his feet. As he moved, the aches dimmed. He had a clear view of two-thirds of the kitchen.

The window slid open and then stopped on a screw.

The shadow of an arm darted inside and gently patted the top of the counter near the sink.

Osric flicked on the kitchen lights. The top half of Containment’s gas masked face appeared in the opening of the kitchen window, his black-clad arm reached through the open window into the house.

“Do you know what time it is?” Osric burst out.

The hand froze.

“Where have you been?”

Containment squeaked, “I was out. With uh, my lunch buddy.”

Figured. The one duty Containment took seriously was mentoring potential superkids.

He should have been preparing to sub for Grace of God. She was flying out to the Philippines tonight - the disaster projection was thousands of deaths without super intervention. No one nearby looked eager to take over B.C., but he didn’t see how Containment could cover the area if anyone tried.

A young boy’s loud, flat, and morose voice floated into the kitchen. “He was with me. We went to the hospital and she was shiny and glowed and we ate yummy bread with fruit in it and I didn’t even eat all of the bread.”

So they’d gone to Vancouver to see Grace of God.

The child was too short to be seen, but Osric recognized the voice and the kid’s weird way of talking. It was too bad his family didn’t suck enough for their kids with a low probability of awakening to be removed and fostered by a family in the Network. This wasn’t even Containment’s lunch buddy, the kid’s older sister was under mentorship.

“Yeah, we came back right after, ASAP,” Containment squeaked.

“What’s hay-sap?” the boy asked loudly.

“It’s short for as soon as possible. It makes me sound more macho,” Containment squeaked.

_ He can’t sound or act less macho than he does right now.  _ Osric had to stop himself from grinding his teeth. Bethany, his new dental hygienist, had just lectured him on the dangers of teeth grinding wearing down his enamel.

“Oh,” the boy said.

Osric checked the clock on the kitchen wall. ”It’s 5pm. Does that sound like lunchtime to you?”

A chorus of high-pitched ‘no’s resounded.

Osric snagged the remote off the back of the couch and flicked on the outside lights.

Giving up now that he’d been caught, Containment slowly rose to his full height of 6’0”. His black lycra bodysuit had a simplistic pattern of orange and navy V-stripes. He was lucky the Super Network had registered his pathetic costume.

“What were you looking for?” Osric asked.

“Chicken salad for the kids’ dinner.”

“Chicken salad spoils and makes normals sick if they eat it. I put it in the fridge.” It might not hurt him, especially in the winter, but this kid got sick too often. Osric got up and opened the fridge. The chicken salad was in a green, square bowl on the middle shelf, above a bag of carrots, a couple leaves of wilted lettuce, and half a loaf of rye bread. He scooped them into a stack.

Holding the food hostage just out of Containment’s reach, Osric said, “After you walk your lunch buddy home, we need to talk.”

“Yeah, okay, we’ll talk,” Containment squeaked meekly through his gas mask.

Osric gave him a glare and handed over the leftovers.  _ At least bread and chicken salad is half of a decent meal instead of the junk food crap their parents feed them. _

Osric closed the window and the blinds, and drew the curtains with the remote, then paced in the hallway formed by the couch. More clicks of a remote popped up night-time surveillance from the cameras around their small house on the monitor hanging on the wall and Typhoon Haiyan’s advance into the Philippines.

Open letters lay accusingly next to the laptop: a citation for reckless cycling and an official request for intervention by Pac Northwest Region’s Council. Bellingham had elected a new traffic safety enforcement officer who wasn’t cutting Containment any slack.

Osric wondered where it had all gone wrong.

He’d lost time before, woken up, and things didn’t make sense. Even now, after the worst, most blatant episode of mind control, his gut instinct told him that Containment was solid, he was good.

It couldn’t be a minion master. Atlantic tracked all of them. None of the masters escaped close monitoring and a new one would make waves in the astral sphere.

Osric had time before Containment got back; he’d move at the time of a normal so the kid wouldn’t feel scared.

He called Gil.

_ Come on.... _

It went to voicemail.

Osric sat in front of the laptop and scrolled back through the typhoon’s progress, looking for the image of the typhoon that he remembered before he’d lost track of his memories.

_ Brrrr. _ The cell phone buzzed on the table. Osric picked up.

“...Hey,” Gil said in his slow, laconic voice.

“Gil, I got a problem,” Osric said.

“Figured as much,” Gil said. “I’ve got time.... Stephen’s in the hyperbaric chamber.“

_ What? The earthquake mitigation and core mission had months to go. _

“Hey, what’s Stephen doing on the surface?”

“Uh, why are you asking?” Gil said.

Gil wasn’t usually close-mouthed.

“No reason, nevermind.… I’m having trouble with Containment. Time loss and my body - it doesn’t … it doesn’t feel right. I lost track around--” Osric double-checked the time on the typhoon, matching it with his memory of the image. “... two-thirty pm. He’s back from visiting Grace of God, taking a mentee home. I’ve got fifteen minutes.”

“You think it’s him?” Gil asked.

“Yeah, pretty sure it’s him. I mean, who else would it be?” Osric said.

“Rogue controller?” Gil asked.

“Maybe …. Why target me?” Osric asked.

“Been wondering that myself,” Gil said slowly.

“The only person who’d want to control me is Containment or one of his enemies, Dr. Teddy Bear, or China Region supers…, and they haven’t come after him for five years. Why do it now?”

Gil didn’t say anything.

“He’s been doing this since before he recruited me….Yeah. The first thing I remember is not remembering meeting him and waking up in the middle of an incident. You know, the one in China, I was filming  _ Kung Fu Killer _ . Containment came in and engaged a mind controller enslaving people - the China Region supers were ignoring the abuse of superpowers … then he iced a bunch of the supers and got kicked out of the Region. I had to smuggle him out on a stolen plane, we ran out of fuel and crashed in the Pacific….

“Man, that was a terrible movie,” Gil commented. “The first six minutes turned me off watching the rest of the film.”

“Hey, making the movie was an experience. I googled mind control and minionization survivors and did a little research on my own. It’s not mind control and it’s not modification.”

“...Well that knocks my theory out of the water,” Gil said.

“What do you mean?” Osric asked.

Silence.

“The watch that you gave me, broke,” Osric said.

“The watch?”

Osric said. “When we graduated from Super School. Remember? You brought the watch when you moved here.”

“Standard operating procedure,” Gil drawled coolly.

“What? No, I can’t throw him under the bus. He hasn’t done anything wrong,” Osric said quickly.

“He broke an Agreement. On  _ you _ ,” Gil said.

“Besides that,” Osric said. “I know it sounds crazy, but my gut feeling tells me he hasn’t gone rogue. We can do this without dragging Atlantic in; you know what they’re like...”  _...better than I do. _

Gil’s first superhero had gotten herself iced for breaking an Agreement and sent to Venus on a twelve year mapping and geological survey mission. It was a prison sentence until his superhero burned through her astral energy and died. Their synchronization broke badly - and one of Atlantic’s suckier masters patched Gil’s personality and memories together; his wife didn’t want his son to see him - his friends and family from before wouldn’t talk to him. The personality changes and modified memories made them ‘uncomfortable’--


	11. Jared

####  **Jared flinched,** **lost his balance, and toppled off the branch.**

He wrapped his arms around the kid. Memories flooded him; the heavy, wrong stench of the atmosphere, his lungs and body burning, the weight crushing him. He remembered her dying. He’d been a part of the synchronization and hadn’t remembered it until now, couldn’t remember it clearly.

They hit the soft, malleable ground; the kid was a lead weight on Jared’s chest and belly. The ground gave away; Jared rolled smoothly onto his side and then faced the kid down, getting his head and chest out from under the mass of Dean’s body - it pulled - it smothered him from inside.

Jared’s body curled and bent around Dean’s small body as they sunk. Jared kept his head clear - but Dean’s weight didn’t crush him like it felt like it should have. His knees and the bones of his leg jabbed into his shoulder and into Dean’s soft body, his back curved, his head bent and pressed into the top of Dean’s head by the scrubby grass, by the unnatural, stretched out earth.

Jared twisted his head: out of the corner of his eye, the sunlight on the surface was a bright, distant circle.

Dean didn’t look good. His mouth hung open, slack, and his eyes were closed.

“Dean …,” Jared grunted into the kid’s soft mop of hair.

“Dean!”

The kid’s eyes flickered open; his eyes drifted and focused on Jared. The weight lessened.

Dean turned his head. The top right of Dean’s forehead was indented half a finger-length. It looked obscene. Wrong.

Jared hugged the kid gently as the ground slowly rose. He brushed a trembling finger over the kid’s skull - no blood, the hole felt weak and soft; a shadow of movement underneath his finger - like if he pressed - not even hard - his finger would sink all the way in. Jared yanked his finger away; it looked different. Jared brushed the divot again - the indentation in Dean’s skull filled in as the ground opened up to the sunlight like a flower opening its petals to the dawn. Jared let his body fold over Dean, the sunlight brushed over the kid. Jared blinked away tears.

“Dean.” Jared let himself lay on top of the kid. Dean’s body pulled at him. Jared felt the earth’s mild pulse through the palms of his hands on the dirt, Dean’s heartbeat in his ear, his own heart pounding and slowing.

Dean looked up at Jared with clear eyes. He reached his slim arm to his head and rubbed the top-right side of his skull. “I’m okay. Headache,” the kid said breathlessly.

_ That’s not-- _

“I’m okay, really,” Dean said with a half-giggle, squirming under Jared. The kid made himself relax and let Jared lay over him. The mass of the kid’s body and the feel of the earth; it wasn’t the earth … this reality was Dean’s mind, and the ground was his body.

_ What the hell did I eat? _

“Dean, what was that?”

Dean looked at Jared blankly, shifting his small head against Jared’s hair. “Uh…, I got dizzy.” Dean put his hand on his head and smiled.

Jared pushed himself up. Dean looked like he always had: sweet, people-pleasing, very adult 6-year old. Dean sat up with Jared and stayed close, looking up at Jared adoringly.

The kid held his whole arm up, with his palm flat: stop. “I’m okay.” He pulled himself upright, extra.

“What was I eating?” Jared asked.

“My power,” Dean said proudly. “I have a lot, and my regeneration is the best.”

_ Shit. He is a real kid. Who’s his guardian then? The grownups? And class I regeneration, is he a Class I combat super? There are no awakened Class I children alive … that I know about. _

“Come here,” Jared said, reaching his long arms out and drawing the kid into a hug. Dean snuggled close and held Jared with restraint, like an adult, aware of his body and strength. The solid mass of Dean’s dense body was reassuring. Jared held on.

_ And who made him think that eating his power is something he should be proud of? _

It wasn’t safe for the kid, not with him here. “I need to know what’s going on,” Jared said to the top of Dean’s head.

Dean stilled in Jared’s arms.

_ What would it take to get this kid to calm down? _ “If you don’t wanna tell me, that’s fine. I want you to show me,” Jared said. “I’ve got to get back to my body.”

“Okay,” Dean said breathlessly, adoring.

“And not up that tree,” Jared said. The spindly-legged, fat-bodied spiders stared at him, fanned out to cover the tree and the roots. A fast-moving shadow clattered along the trunk: a miniature squirrel with a brown underside, long, glittering claws and gleaming white teeth. The spring bubbled. Lush, green grass sprouted around the edge of the pool. The grasses and trees and bushes looked all the same, the same species over and over without variety, in the woods below and in the clearing.

Dean looked stumped.

“If we make a circle with branches and rocks…,” Jared said.

“Yeah!” Dean nodded fervently. Dean leaned away and Jared let him go. The kid jumped up and collected rocks and sticks at super speed, darting around the clearing in a childishly disorganized, criss-crossed pattern, dropping the materials next to Jared.

Jared placed the sticks and rocks precisely on a patch of dirt that was clear of grass, concentrating to avoid poking the earth and injuring Dean. The circle closed. He glanced at Dean. He hated this, hating how much he would hurt the kid if he let himself go for a moment.

Dean sat down next to him and the window opened. He felt the kid lean against his side. He fell into the handler’s mind.


	12. Osric

“...pers. You can have Containment, I want the Arrow,” Osric said.

“No. And stop saying you can  _ do _ him,” Gil drawled.

Scraping noises, a man’s light voice.

“The Arrow’s up.”

“...Catch you later,” Osric said.

“If you’re still you, call me in twenty,” Gil drawled.

Osric puts the phone on the table.

He lolls back on the couch and lets his thoughts sink deep - knowing the truth firmly in the ground schemas of his mind, influencing his opinions and action without rising into his surface reactions and thoughts. He fanned a feeling of disgust and then contempt at Jensen’s boring, smarmy, overly hearty and fake persona, letting the prickly, unpleasant feelings swell and permeate his thoughts, change his motivations, hidden ...

A shadow flickered in the security feed.


	13. Jared

####  **Jared jerked out of the synchronization again.**

This was a synchronization. The amount of hostility the guy could fake.... it worked. Dean looked up.

_ How is this happening? _

“It’s okay,” Jared said. His left arm was around the kid, and he ruffled the pleasant, soft brush of hair and nuzzled it.  _ Nice. _ The ground was off-limits, but the kid’s body couldn’t be hurt. “Take us back.”


	14. Osric

This wasn’t the life he wanted to live. The research that he did on supervillains, that Jensen asked him to do, Jensen handed over to other supers as resource material for their missions: missions Osric never went on, never saw, and never got recognition for.

Containment wasn’t the superhero Osric’d thought he was.

Containment thumped on the front door and it swung open; his gas masked face peeked out from behind the edge of the door.

_ I know you can read my mind, asshole. Playing cute only works on the town’s idiotic civilians who worship the ground you walk on,  _ Osric thought deliberately. “Get inside, you’re letting in the cold air.”

Containment shut the door and pulled off his gas mask, revealing Jensen’s symmetrical, handsome face with green eyes and short brown hair mussed from the gas mask straps. A canvas bag of groceries dangled from his hand.

Osric pointed at the letters. “You have a citation for reckless cycling and a request for official intervention by the Network. And I hope you weren’t up in Vancouver taking patients to Grace of God, because she needs to prep for disaster relief in the Philippines.”

Jensen leaned casually against the wall; his body formed a graceful, elegant curve,  _ image conscious ass. _ With the mask off, Jensen’s voice was a warm, pleasant baritone with a rough edge. “That’s why I took the kids, before she flew out tonight. Needed to talk to Grace of God before she left.”

_ Dodging half the-- I want to know how you think you’re going to cover British Columbia Region for her. You can’t fly or teleport and you tell me jack shit. _

“This is going to make you happy, got orders on the supervillain Papaver, investigate and intervene,” Jensen said. He flicked his wrist and tossed Osric a small object underhand. Osric snatched it out of the air: it was a flash drive.

“Chad got footage on him,” Jensen said.

_ Finally, this is it! _

_ This is insane!  _ Papaver was the supervillain behind ISIS and Al-Qaeda. _ He probably broke the non-governmental interference policy in a country belonging to the Super Network.  _ It was one of the principles of the Super Network, no mind-control or minionization without the informed permission of the target and witnessed by a Coordinator and the superhero’s handler.  _ Not that Containment doesn’t break this Agreement constantly _ .  _ Lucky his handler never reports him so he doesn’t get iced,  _ Osric thought pointedly.

“Why are we going after him?” Osric asked.

“He minionized the Vice President of the Philippines. Advance team for the typhoon found out,” Jensen answered.

“A minion master? I thought Papaver was a mind-controller,” Osric asked warily.

“No, he’s uh, minionized a couple of mind-controllers,” Jensen answered, looking down and rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. “I found out in Iraq.”

_ Where we went looking for a cure for Dean, again. _

“Why didn’t you tell me? I need to report this,” Osric snapped.

“I reported it.” Jensen cut his hand through the air peremptorily. “Everyone who needs to know, knows.”

_ Fucker, I don’t believe you!  _ Osric crossed his arms. “Pretend I didn’t go to Super School in person, which I didn’t, and my handler training consisted of four online courses and what I researched on my own … and explain the difference between a minion master and a mind-controller.”

“You know I didn’t go to Super School. The twenty weeks of online training you got is more training than I got,” Jensen said.

“Yeah, I forget you’re old. What does it matter. You know what the difference is, just tell me.”

Jensen rolled his eyes exaggeratedly. “Why don’t you go check your class notes.” He pointed a meaty finger at Osric. “Get to work, first teams to finish prep get in on the mission.”


	15. Madison

The Arrow’s huge ... and sexy, for an old guy.

_ What?! _

Madison got a hold of her thoughts.  _ Yeah, this isn’t the time for sex. _

The hospital here looked run-down and shabby. The hyperbaric chamber was right next to the water in an outbuilding next to the University of Washington’s hospital. Two tall, skinny grad students are at the computers. She deliberately not-notices if they’re cute or not.

Madison assesses the superhero:  _ Class II combat superset, on core exploration and earthquake mitigation, called back for this operation. Not a full-time combat super. This guy looks good. Hope he’s worth it. I’m gonna burn through my astral reserves teleporting him into position. _

He’s breathing from an oxygen tank, so his regeneration can’t be max.  _ Weird he’d go down to the core. Electric Electron has max regen, he’d be better. _

Ruby’s scrying a portal to Atlantic. She hasn’t come out and said it, but something’s wrong with Team A. They changed the flight to land in Seattle, , Ruby gave her an ID code for Psy B.  _ I might need to fight in Vancouver. _

Jared’s company’s reps are in Seattle. Madison looks for a quieter place to call. She’s glad ...  now ... that Jared made her call all the reps and office personnel and talk to them at least once.

The hallway is off-limits. Gil, The Arrow’s handler, is super-creepy and creepily staring at her.

“Hey,” Madison says.

“Hey,” the guy drawls.

“What’s going on?” Madison asks.

The guy stares at her with a weird look on his face. “Waiting for a call … seeing if my friend is … himself.”

_ Like under mind-control or minionized? He’s ground control for an agent? _

“I’m not … running ground control. He’s just … my friend,” Gil says.

Madison makes her face blank, so he can’t read her. W _ hy hasn’t he reported this?  _ “Is your friend in Vancouver?”  _ He shouldn’t be messing with an active operation. These guys are way disorganized, it’s crazy. _

“Close,” Gil drawls. “Bellingham.”

_ That place. Dr. Teddy Bear, Containment and Lucifer. What’s-- _

**Author's Note:**

> If you disagree with the depiction of a real person, please leave a comment and I will change the story or swap the real person with another character.
> 
> If you are looking for more super hero fics, bertee and annella have nice super hero fics.
> 
> Cast of Characters:  
> Angel: superhero  
> Becky: member of Containment’s superfan club  
> Black Dog: Caleb, a BC superhero killed by Containment  
> Castiel: a Class I minion master, head of covert operations for Atlantic, a founder of the SN  
> Chad: Dr. Badass  
> Christie: astronomy and superfan meetup organizer in Seattle, fan of Dr. Teddy Bear  
> Containment: Class I cold-war era superhero living in Bellingham  
> Crystal: nurse at the 24-hour clinic at Super U and an astral sorcerer, a founder of the SN  
> Dean: thought stream sharing Containment’s body  
> Dr. Badass: BC superhero with control over devices powered by electricity  
> Dr. Teddy Bear: Bellingham supervillain, transforms into a flying teddy bear, nemesis of Containment  
> Emily: five year old with a broken bone in her foot  
> Flowerpower: Class I superhero in Atlantic  
> Gabe: Jared’s personal assistant and handler  
> Gabriel: Class I ruling superhero of Cali-Southwest  
> Gil: an agent in the Super Network, Osric’s buddy from training  
> Genevieve: superhero in Atlantic, a team leader for undercover operations  
> Grace of God: Class I ruling superhero of BC Region  
> Jeannie: superhero with hair growth and control residing in Atlantic, Jared’s handler  
> Jared: minion master residing in Atlantic, Madison’s mentor  
> Jensen: thought stream sharing Containment’s body  
> Justice: Class I superhero and a field commander for disaster relief in the SN  
> Kevin Royce: coordinator in Atlantic  
> Lou: Bellingham’s FBI liaison with the Super Network, Dr. Teddy Bear  
> Lucifer: Class I cold-war era supervillain  
> Madison: superhero with short range teleportation, age 18  
> Mark: manager of a Lowe’s in Bellingham and owner of a boxing gym, Lucifer  
> Matt: one of Gabriel’s handlers  
> Mikey: petitioner of Grace of God  
> Misha: Overlord, a minion master  
> Osric: Containment’s handler  
> Overlord: Misha  
> Papaver: rogue minion master  
> Psy B: BC superhero with immunity to mind control and minionization  
> Ruby: Genevieve’s cover identity  
> Scout: superhero with videogame powers in Atlantic  
> Stephen: a progressive cyborg  
> Skycom: cold-war era superhero with flight residing in Texarkana  
> Tamara: high school student, member of Containment’s fan club  
> Tara Larsen: coordinator in Atlantic  
> Todd Aronauer: coordinator in BC  
> Torment: cold-war era supervillain, killed by Containment  
> Vortex: superhero residing in Atlantic with medium-range teleportation  
> Warrior of God: Ellen, a BC superhero killed by Containment  
> Witness: mind controller, a founder of the SN  
> Zach: Emily’s younger brother, age 3


End file.
